Starring Mrs Lovett's Meat Pies - as Cupcakes!

Last weekend Rob and I were invited to a fabulous “Musicals and Theatre” themed fancy dress party. You may have already seen the Sound of Music cake pops I made for the party as well. My biggest challenge, and on request from the hosts, was to create some ‘meat pies’ for Mrs. Lovett’s kitchen, from Sweeney Todd. Never one to refuse a request I spent the past couple of weeks scheming to come up with these baked beauties!

I wanted the base of the cake to be dense and chocolatey, with different textures to give the effect of a chunky pie filling. I started off with 2 whole bars of milk and white chocolate, bashed and broken into thick chunks.

The main sponge of the cupcake was a rich chocolate, and they baked up beautifully with chocolate oozing out of the top. (I coated the chunks in a little flour before mixing in so they didn’t all sink to the bottom).

Next up – a gooey ‘meat juice’ – aka a thick, sticky red velvet buttercream, lightly flavoured with chocolate and vanilla, and coloured a gross blood red!

I used this to fill the cupcakes…

… and cover the tops:

Any good pie needs a pastry lid, and these were certainly no exception… or were they? This pie was covered in a coloured fondant, using a highly technical mix of yellow, orange, peach, ivory and even black food colouring.

To get the proper meat pie look, the edges were crimped with the edge of a fork, and little pastry leaves added to the centre.

Fresh meat pies, ready to ‘bake’!

And bake they did – with the careful help of my lovely painter and decorator Rob. He used brown food colouring diluted with water, and stippling with a paint brush to create a fantastic baked pastry crust to the pies.

Get them while they’re hot!

And Mrs. Lovett’s pies wouldn’t be complete without a few (fondant) extras:

We arrived at the party to find the kitchen amazingly transformed into Mrs Lovett’s pie shop, completely bedecked with fake brickwork all around the normal white walls. And, as the birthday boy works down in Leicestershire, he’d picked up a huge haul of pork pies from Melton Mowbray. My how this confused people!

We gave them half a chance by putting the cupcake ‘pies’ on cake stands, but there was still a lot of surprise when they bit in! I didn’t get to try one (don’t worry I stocked up on birthday cake), but received a rave review that they tasted “like a bite of a dream”. Result! Look gross but taste great

I couldn’t help but share some more photos from the party as so much effort had gone into decorating the house.

The conservatory morphed into The Little Shop of Horrors, complete with a handmade Audrey 2:

Recognise the chandelier from Phantom of the Opera? Again, all handmade!

And the pièce de résistance – a giant Clock of the Time Dragon from Wicked. Complete with moving clock hands and smoke from the dragons mouth. AMAZING!

To finish – my rock star and I in our costumes!

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