"Guess What am I cooking" vs "Guess What I am cooking"

Question

I'm really confused between these two. Please help.

Answer 1

"Guess what I am cooking" is the correct use. "I am" implies a statement of action, like "I am cooking right now". "Am I" is used for a question, like "Am I supposed to Cook?", or "What am I going to cook with these ingredients?"

I can understand why it might seem confusing though, since a phrase like "guess what I am cooking" feels like a question, but is technically a command.

Answer 2

The question "what I am cooking" can occur as part of a grammatical construction, as in your example where it is object of "guess", or in "What I am cooking is a mystery", where it is a subject. When it is not part of a larger construction, it must undergo the rule of subject-auxiliary inversion: "What am I cooking?" Direct quotations, which purport to give the exact words of an unembedded question, have the same inverted order as unembedded questions: "He asked: "What am I cooking?""

Following Joseph Emonds, unembedded clauses are called "root sentences". They have other special properties.