Just when we thought things had settled down on the cupcake front, another sugary volley has been launched by a new entry. But do we really need another bakery? Tarek Malouf, of new import Hummingbird Bakery, thinks his outlet has what it takes to stand out.
Hummingbird, if you ask Malouf, was a name that came to him when he was living in Los Angeles and he watched the birds of the same name drinking sweet nectar out of a special bird feeder he had. “They are native to the Americas,” he said during an interview at the new Hummingbird Bakery in Dubai Mall, the first outlet outside the UK, where Malouf founded the brand in 2004. Hummingbird was one of the first shops to bring American-style baking -- cupcakes, brownies and whoopie pies -- to Britain, where many GCC visitors discovered the brand and begged them to open in the region. “Nine times out of 10, it’s been somebody from a Gulf country,” he said of the franchise requests. He eventually partnered with Gourmet Gulf.
Hummingbird is also a variety of cupcake that contains banana and pineapple, but at this outlet, it’s the red velvet (Dh14) that people go for. “It’s the clear winner, and has been from the start,” said Malouf. Also worth sampling, and so far only spotted at Hummingbird are black bottom cupcakes, a denser-than-normal chocolate sponge that has cheesecake baked into it and cream cheese frosting, and whoopie pies.
“It’s like a cake hamburger,” said Malouf of the large cake sandwiches. “It’s a more study sponge than a cupcake, a little firmer and drier, but to make up for that, the filling is a bit sweeter than a frosting. It’s a combination of frosting plus marshmallow fluff. Ours are quite generously sized.”
But with so many other cupcake brands on the market here, what’s Hummingbird bringing to the already laden table? “All the cakes that we make, we bake freshly onsite. Not all the other ones do, and that’s really important. We found it’s the only way that things are fresh and taste the way they do if you are a good baker and made them at home yourself,” he said.
Malouf, of Lebanese origin, brought up in the UK, started out in TV journalism before finding his true calling, and his pet project is carefully thought through. For example, he has a refreshing opinion on the frosting-cake ratio. “A traditional American cupcake looks like that,” he said, pointing to the red velvet cupcake before him. “This new thing of piling it up so it’s double the sponge, I think it’s difficult to eat them and it’s too sickly sweet. That’s a new thing that’s started and we steer clear of that. Because we were the first, we can do things the way they should be done and we didn’t feel the need to be different.”
