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Grisly cupcakes to die for
By Michele Kayal |
October 21, 2010, Thursday
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Print Edition
Print Edition
IF calories are the only thing standing between you and that cupcake, consider yourself lucky. Ancient Celts worried about far more than waistlines.
"The ancient Celts used cakes as way to select people for sacrifice," says London-based baker Lily Jones, who also goes by Lily Vanilli, author of "A Zombie Ate My Cupcake" (Cico Books, 2010). "There's actually a dead body in the British Museum. He was a sacrifice victim that was selected by a cake. He was preserved in tar."
In those days, the baker would blacken part of the cake, which would be divided at a special ceremony. The person who received the black piece would "volunteer" for sacrifice, Jones says. Which makes you wonder why anybody would sidle up to the table in the first place. "I guess the offer of a slice of delicious cake was enough," she says.
But Jones' book gives new meaning to the idea of a cake good enough to die for. Tired of the pretty but poor tasting cupcakes being hawked on seemingly every street corner, Jones decided to turn the idea on its head: to make delicious cupcakes that looked grotesque.
In her world, marzipan fingers protrude from a cocoa powder graveyard; coconut jelly eyeballs jiggle atop white frosting; and cupcake tops blossom into bloody pink brains.
In her London shop, bleeding heart cupcakes are best-sellers, Jones says, and she gets lots of custom orders as well. The weirdest? A woman who asked for a cake that was an exact replica of her boyfriend's head.
"It was just a head on a plate," Jones says. "It looked a bit like the movie "Seven" because I delivered it in a cake box. The receptionist recognized him in the box."
So basically a human sacrifice without the actual sacrifice.
Halloween will find Jones doing a dark, sinister tea party in an East London taxidermy shop. What will she go as to do justice to all her macabre confections? "I don't know yet," she says. "I make a pretty good Olive Oyl from Popeye."
"The ancient Celts used cakes as way to select people for sacrifice," says London-based baker Lily Jones, who also goes by Lily Vanilli, author of "A Zombie Ate My Cupcake" (Cico Books, 2010). "There's actually a dead body in the British Museum. He was a sacrifice victim that was selected by a cake. He was preserved in tar."
In those days, the baker would blacken part of the cake, which would be divided at a special ceremony. The person who received the black piece would "volunteer" for sacrifice, Jones says. Which makes you wonder why anybody would sidle up to the table in the first place. "I guess the offer of a slice of delicious cake was enough," she says.
But Jones' book gives new meaning to the idea of a cake good enough to die for. Tired of the pretty but poor tasting cupcakes being hawked on seemingly every street corner, Jones decided to turn the idea on its head: to make delicious cupcakes that looked grotesque.
In her world, marzipan fingers protrude from a cocoa powder graveyard; coconut jelly eyeballs jiggle atop white frosting; and cupcake tops blossom into bloody pink brains.
In her London shop, bleeding heart cupcakes are best-sellers, Jones says, and she gets lots of custom orders as well. The weirdest? A woman who asked for a cake that was an exact replica of her boyfriend's head.
"It was just a head on a plate," Jones says. "It looked a bit like the movie "Seven" because I delivered it in a cake box. The receptionist recognized him in the box."
So basically a human sacrifice without the actual sacrifice.
Halloween will find Jones doing a dark, sinister tea party in an East London taxidermy shop. What will she go as to do justice to all her macabre confections? "I don't know yet," she says. "I make a pretty good Olive Oyl from Popeye."
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