Laravel throws 'The bootstrap/cache directory must be present and writable' error after update

Try this after you have run the composer update:

php artisan cache:clear

On your Laravel directory file, run:

sudo chmod -R 777 bootstrap/cache/

Short version: If uploading using something like AWS eb cli Verify if bootstrap/cache folder (not talking about its contents) is being deployed.

Some background behind my answer

I am using Amazon Web Services' Elastic Beanstalk to host my Laravel project. As I just started using Laravel I do not have much idea about its functioning. Two days back My new deployments were all crashing midway with OP's error message.

Earlier that day, I realised that I was not using

 php artisan config:cache

to cache configurations to make things faster. And I added the same in composer.json's "post-install-cmd" and "post-update-cmd" clauses.
And I also added statement in .ebignore file to not upload the content of /bootstrap/cache (as its content is environment dependent a.k.a my localhost configurations have no meaning on my production server)

And facepalm I did not realise that this will stop the bootstrap/cache folder from being uploaded (as Like git, eb cli ignores empty folders).
So, when I started to deploy at night The deployments were meant to crash.

So, now I have just placed empty-placeholder (say) .gitkeep file in bootstrap/cache. And deployments are working once again :)
(Though the problem was so simple I realised the reason after ssh-ing and digging an EBS EC2 instance for some sweet sleep hours ~.~ )