Cake Galore! (Conversation #5)

This was my absolute favorite conversation yet! You can guess it… it revolved around my two favorite things: family and food. I knew that Essa’s family was close knit particularly due to their living situation. Essa has 5 brothers and 2 sisters. All of the siblings are married except for 2 of them (one of the brothers and one of the sisters). Therefore, all of the siblings are beginning to expand the family as they begin to develop individual families of their own. 7 siblings seemed like quite a bit to Kally and me, but Essa thought nothing of it. He did mention, however, that they are often busy with their families, so he mainly gets to spend time with the siblings that are not yet married. What is amazing is that all of them live together. Essa’s father’s house that we previously discussed was an expanded house that his father built on in order to give his children somewhere to live after they graduate. What I didn’t realize until this conversation was that he meant all of the children and their families! This wasn’t just a temporary apartment until they marry. This was a home for all of the siblings and their children to live in… together! Talk about quality family time. The way that Essa spoke about it made it seem as though this is a customary practice in Saudi Arabia. This is quite different here in America, but it truly serves as a reflection of how much family is valued in Saudi Arabia. Next, he started to talk to us more about one of his sisters who loves to bake. Essa mentioned that he helps his sister mix colors for decorating her pastries. At this point, I thought Essa was just being a good brother and assisting his sister in one of her hobbies. What I didn’t know was that this sister is the Einstein of baking. He began to show us some of her cakes that she has made, and Kally and I were absolutely lost for words. They were the most intricate, beautiful cakes I had ever seen. Apparently, his father constructed a room for her in their home strictly for her baking. Essentially, it is a baking studio for all of her client requests stocked with all of the baking essentials that a girl could ever dream of. One cake was designed like a Kit Kat bar and honestly looked that I was looking at a real oversized Kit Kat. This girl runs a baking mecca. I attached a link to her cakes, because you will have to see them to understand how incredible these cakes are. http://instagram.com/nona_albinali This link is to her Instagram page, which has thousands of followers. Awestruck, Kally and I assumed that she makes all of the cakes and sweets for their family occasions, but Essa says she typically just bakes for business and for her Instagram fans. Apparently, in Saudi Arabia, engagement cakes are a huge deal, which I found extremely interesting. He says that she does more engagement cakes than wedding cakes. He let us in on a little business secret: she buys her cupcakes from another store, because it is more profitable than making them herself. He called one cake the “sexy body” cake. It was shaped like a woman’s body for a baby shower. Kally and I were cracking up hearing him explain the cake. Essa says his favorite of her treats are the chocolate balls and that his sister makes them for him fairly often. She took a class in Dubai to learn how to create the straight lines of the cake. He said that it took a while to get the cake perfectly straight on the top, so in the class they even put a leveler on the top of the cake to indicate how straight across it was. The starting price on her cakes is $140 and increases with each tier and other variables of the cake. Essa also went on to mention that he tried to buy her some baking equipment here in the states. He made a great point that the companies that sold this equipment were not manufacturers in Saudi Arabia, so he refrained from buying her the equipment out of fear that they would break with no one to be able to fix them. I got a kick out the fact that Essa mentioned that all of her friends are beginning to attempt to copy her cakes. Well… once you see these cakes, you will realize that not just anyone cake create these masterpiece. This girl has truly developed an art.