Photos by Baher Amin © The Peninsula
“Is that a cake or the real thing?” That’s the question everyone asks Shamna Ubaid, a homemaker in Doha whenever she bakes a cake that resembles a tender coconut or a jackfruit or an angry bird.
It was quite accidental that she found her calling in baking and now has clients across nationalities ordering cakes.
When a friend informed Shamna of a cake baking contest, she decided to present her tender coconut cake in the shape of the nut itself and at the first cooking contest she took part in her life, she not only won the hearts of the judges and those present but also got home the winners trophy.
“I had once baked a cake in the shape of a jackfruit for my family and shared the picture on my social media page – Bake My Day. It was an instant hit and most of my friends were wondering if its a real fruit or a cake,” she says, adding that the cake remains the biggest hit on her page.
“Shamna’s cake tastes and looks so perfect that it is impossible to believe that she had not been baking for long,” says a customer and a friend, Muneera Ibrahim, adding that it also gives us, non-bakers, a hope that if you set your heart at something, anything can be achieved, including baking a good-looking and tasting cake.
When Shamna moved to Doha four years back, her plans were to put her Masters in Literature to good use and get a corporate job. But life had something else planned and she found herself at home with a little kid to care for. Not one to sit idle, she soon took to YouTube and started to learn the art of baking.
According to Shamna, both jackfruit and tender coconut cakes, her most popular cakes, were simpler to make since it involved only piping work with the right coloured whipped cream. It was the cake in the shape of a waterfall that involved lot of hard work since she had to get the shape of the entire cake right and then top it off with whipped cream. “I prefer to work usually with whipped cream and butter cream rather than fondant, unless there is a specific requirement from someone,” she says.
Shamna has attended workshops to improve her skills on making floral rice paste and edible wafer papers. “One of my passions while in school was drawing and I recently started hand painting my cakes,” she adds.
Mother to three kids, Shamna believes her family to be her best critic adding, “they are usually the first ones to bear with all my experiments and enjoy the results of my success too.”
The home baker along with few other bakers in town now share their skills with others through workshops. She has already helped over 400 residents in Qatar learn techniques to become a good baker for them to make Instagram-worthy cakes.
