Blackbutt Bakery wins Burnett’s Best Meat Pie 2024

The Blackbutt Bakery has taken out top spot in the quest to find the Burnett’s Best Meat Pie of 2024, winning 30 per cent of the vote. See their reaction and who made the top five.

Best Meat Pies in the Burnett in 2024 winner: Roberta Anson and the Blackbutt Bakery.

The Blackbutt Bakery has taken out top spot in the quest to find the Burnett’s Best Meat Pie of 2024, winning 30 per cent of the vote.

Roberta Anson bought the 100-year-old bakery 14 years ago with no experience in making pies or pastries, but a love for cooking.

“We came here 14 years ago and this bakery was up for sale and we decided to do something different and I have always loved cooking,” a delighted Ms Anson said.

“That’s so exciting to think that everybody took their time to vote for us. That’s really awesome. All the wonderful people, that’s wonderful. The staff will be over the moon.”

Coming in second place in the reader’s poll, with 19 per cent of the vote, was the Goomeri Bakery, followed by the Yarraman Bakery on third with 18 per cent of the vote, the Gin Gin Bakery fourth with 11 per cent of the vote, and Picky’s Pies and Pastries fifth, with eight per cent of the vote.

Ms Anson said this week the pies were not that long ago made in the bakery’s original wood-fired oven.

“The bakery is a 100 years old and it’s still got the original wood fired oven in it, and when we first got it we didn’t have enough electricity so we had to wood fire the bread, the pies and everything,” she said.

Burnett’s Blackbutt Bakery has been voted Best Pies in the Burnett 2024.

“For about seven to eight years everything was wood fired until we could get enough electricity to put in an actual electric oven, everything originally was here, but the oven is still here and still does work but we’re baking with electricity now.”

Ms Anson said she got talked into purchasing the bakery and that it was petrifying.

“My friend she moved up here and her husband was dying of cancer and they were moving up here and we were going to get a little holiday place,” she said.

“The bakery had gone into bankruptcy. She knew how much I love cooking and she wanted a job as well. I got talked into buying the bakery, it was scary.

“I didn’t know anything about anything, pies, pastry, bread, nothing. We taught ourselves how to make pastry and how to work in a bigger scale.

Ms Anson said the initial steps of making the best pies was to make the stock.

“You have to make up whatever you’re going to cook, like the meat you are going to make, if you’re making a butter chicken, your sweet-sour pork or whatever your mixes,” she said.

“When we cook the corn beef pies, the corn beef is cooked in the water with cloves and brown sugar and vinegar; we cook all the meat like you would cook at home,” she said.

Burnett’s Blackbutt Bakery has been voted Best Pies in the Burnett 2024.

Ms Anson said the support of the community made her grateful.

“We put a lot of time, effort and love into them but we’re really thankful that everybody has appreciated our work and that’s really fantastic,” she said.

Ms Anson was born and raised in Bartle Frere in North Queensland and lived in Kallangur in Brisbane before moving permanently to the South Burnett.

“I’m a country girl from Bartle Frere if you know where the highest mountain in Queensland is,” she said.

“Preparing for everyday business is an ongoing process and we work 24/7. Prepping starts from 4am or 5am until 10pm or 11pm in the evening.”

Ms Anson has a 34 year-old daughter who is part-owner of the bakery.

Burnett’s Blackbutt Bakery has been voted Best Pies in the Burnett 2024.

“We put so much time and effort into the pies here to make sure they taste nice, we are all about flavor, it has to be really flavorsome, we check them all and make sure everything is all up to scratch.”

“Each week we change the flavors of our pies, we have put flavours like the Back Burner in, Chilli Cheese Burger in, we put the Lamborghini, and we have got Big Mac.

“It changes all the time from butter chicken to crocodile, to camel, whatever, we have done a goat pie, big prawn and a barramundi pie.”

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Originally published as Blackbutt Bakery wins Burnett’s Best Meat Pie 2024