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Bahrain-based baker Mubina Maqbool continues to dish out delicious treats for all to eat and is giving foodies a chance to learn her signature tips and tricks with the launch of her upcoming second book.
The Indian mother-of-two who lives in West Riffa has been whisking up goodies and serving them across the kingdom for almost a decade.
She had delighted dessert friends with her first book, A Confectioner’s Secrets, aimed at helping novice bakers succeed in their culinary creations.
Her second book Cakes, Desserts and Beyond is a 270-page guide to baking and making desserts the easy way and is to be published this summer.
“It features 58 exciting recipes of desserts, which are currently trending, using reinvented classical flavours,” said the founder of her home-based business Melting Moments.
“It’s a comprehensive guide to making beautiful fluffy cakes and delicious desserts.
“We are also perpetually on the lookout for uncomplicated recipes, ingredients you can tweak to give the recipe a whole new meaning and this is where the user will find the book helpful. The tips and notes will help the user tinker with the recipe making them the powerful kitchen master.”
Unlike her first book, this one includes a glossary with an A to Z guide of terms, terminology, ingredients, tools and equipment used in the scope of this cookbook. There is also a compelling story being told with each recipe through an engaging headnote.
Mubina added that while the first book focused on ‘basic baking recipes’, this one features ‘a bit more fun and adventure’.
“I have explored several Parisian desserts, a lot from Australia, America, and so on,” explained the self-taught baker who after 14 years of intensive learning, mastering the fundamental and advanced baking techniques through trials and errors, began developing recipes and techniques to bring forth scrumptious perfection in cakes and desserts.
“I wanted to diversify the platform a bit more this time,” she said. “The recipes in this book are a marriage of traditional flavours to contemporary desserts. The opulent recipes are accompanied with mouth-watering pictures.
“They have been tested diligently by myself and also by unbiased parties’ and beta recipe testers to check if the instructions are clear. The recipes are broken into simple steps to make baking and creating show-stopping desserts attainable rather than intimidating. The measurement table, oven temperature table and the glossary at their fingertips will save the user a lot of research time.”
Each chapter begins with an introduction of its contents. A headnote accompanies each recipe and shares a story of its origins, history and inspiration. The photographs in the book were taken by Ali Taleb.
This book also acts as a memoir of Mubina’s baking journey, shaped by the people she met, the places she has travelled to and the desserts that fascinated her.
While each recipe is special to her, if she had to choose, she cannot resist the Saffron Tres Leches Cake that she often bakes for her family and friends.
“It’s a light and fluffy saffron sponge soaked in three types of milk flavoured with saffron making it gloriously delicious,” she said. “Consequently, this cookbook is more than just recipes or a list of ingredients. It takes you to a world where taste and beauty are well balanced. A world where we explore the mind, senses and origins of taste. The natural flavours, ingredients and textures will take you down memory lane to childhood days.”
The guide will be available in all the leading bookstores across Bahrain and as an e-book on Amazon.
For details, follow @meltingmomentss on Instagram.
