Bake Sale Pie Cupcakes

For my sister's birthday last year, she had a fall theme. These bake sale pie cupcakes went great with her theme.  It's something you would have at a fall festival, except instead of real pies, these are yummy cupcakes.  (I know my brother, Nicholas, would rather have pies over cupcakes any day, but sorry, my specialty is cupcakes, not pies.)

I used the butter recipe cake mix and they were delicious.  When my sister-in-law tried to make these earlier that year, we were dumb.  We didn't realize the purpose of the foil cupcake cups.  Obviously, they are to resemble a pie tin.  As I said, we were dumb, and while she was gone, we just put the batter in the inner paper cup instead of the paper/foil combo cup.  But they were still good and I think she forgave us.

Once the cupcakes are cooked and cooled, you just frost the top with icing.  Put some cocoa powder in some vanilla frosting until it looks "pie crust" color. It doesn't need alot of frosting on the top.  Just enough so the candies stick.  

This is a good project to enlist some help.  You have to separate the mini M&M's by color.  Tell the helpers they can have some (but only the orange ones! :) Then, you put the candies, letter side down, in the frosting.  You can make chocolate pie, apple pie, cherry pie, lemon pie, blueberry pie, and any other pie you can come up with.  

Next, you put the "pie crust" frosting in a ziploc bag and cut a small hole in the corner.  Pipe the crust along the edge of the pie.  Then, pipe the lattice over the top by going left to right and then right to left. And you've got a pie look-a-like!

I added little name tags for each pie and arranged them on cooling racks to look more like fresh pies.

Try it out!  It's fun and easy and they look great!

I will be teaching how to make these pies and other cupcake techniques in person on October 15 at the LDS meetinghouse on Adam's Hill Dr. in San Antonio.  Come on by if you want to try it out!