Dubai Potterhead uses her baking wizardry to create magical treats
The coronavirus pandemic may have led to a rise in baking but one Dubai resident is taking her love for sweet treats to a new level.
Ayesha Khan, 24, who hails from India but was raised in Saudi Arabia, has spent the past few months experimenting with desserts that are almost too pretty to eat. And, being a big Harry Potter fan, she decided to celebrate July (which she considers to be Harry Potter month because his birthday falls on July 31) by whipping up some truly magical desserts.
“I’ve always had a lot of ideas when it comes to Harry Potter-themed desserts, and this year, since we were all at home anyway, I decided to start creating,” she says.
It began with Sorting Hat chocolate tarts that “sort” those eating them into the four Hogwarts houses. Each tart hides a coloured jam filling within – strawberry is for Gryffindor, lime for Slytherin, lemon for Hufflepuff and blueberry for Ravenclaw.
Khan then baked a Golden Snitch cake, which took her two days to complete – one day to make and another to decorate. The intricate creation features a tempered chocolate sphere, filled with Nutella mousse and salted caramel and topped with wings made from meringue. Fellow Potterheads will also appreciate the fact that Khan went the extra mile by making a Resurrection Stone out of sugar, using a hexagonal silicon ice tray, and placing it in the centre of the dessert. (If you do not get the Resurrection Stone reference, it’s time to brush up on your Potter trivia).
Her latest creation was the perfect tribute to the boy wizard’s birthday. The Butterbeer Cake was decorated like the one Hagrid gets Harry for his 11th birthday, when he reveals to him that he is a wizard – complete with the misspelled text and the bright frosting. “It’s a brown sugar cake with brown-butter Swiss meringue frosting and butterscotch sauce,” she says.
Khan works as a marketing executive at a tech start-up, and has never had any formal culinary training. However, she has always had a penchant for baking, and her family runs a dessert parlour called Cake Away in Silicon Oasis.
“When I was young, I would make box cakes, and as I grew up, I was looking for new things to try. As the years passed, I kept trying new things and experimenting.
Instagram has been a big catalyst,” she says. Khan says she learnt much of her technique through YouTube videos, social media and recipe books, and started baking seriously in 2016, after she made a three-layered cake for a friend’s birthday.
However, it is the pandemic that turned her attention to intricate desserts that look more like artwork – all made in her home kitchen. Some examples are a pistachio mousse and vanilla cake within a sugar globe (a dessert that took days to perfect and gave her sleepless nights) and a chai parfait with Parle-G biscuits.
“The pandemic has been a big reason behind this series,” Khan says. “The world seemed to slow down, I had more time to read, and learn. This is a project that has been on my mind for a while now, and I finally got time to do it.
“I like to create desserts with nostalgic flavours, something we enjoyed as a child, or something that we enjoy eating but would never think of as a dessert,” she adds.
So what happens after she has created her scrumptious dessert? “We eat it, of course,” she says. “Breaking it up and savouring it is as satisfying as putting it together. I stay with my brother and his wife, so we just polish off the entire thing.”
With Harry Potter month now over, Khan has set herself the next challenge – desserts inspired by Disney movies. “I’m super excited,” she says.
I’ve always had a lot of ideas when it comes to Harry Potter-themed desserts, and this year I decided to start creating