Mini Cupcake Pies - (cake that looks like pie)

My daughter's birthday was last month, and while all the girls are getting older and their theme parties are a bit more chill, I always still try to make a fun cake for their birthday.  She was just going to have some friends come over to play video games, and didn't have a particular theme in mind. Then I realized that she plays a game on the computer where they make virtual pies all day. I had this idea to make cupcakes look like miniature pies.  We searched around on Pinterest and came up with a few ideas to base our cake/pies on.  They turned out super cute!!

Mini Cupcake Pies are probably the cutest thing ever!

 
All you need are:

24 cooked, cooled cupcakes (from a box or from scratch)
Silver cupcake liners (to look like pie pans)
1 large bag of mini MnM's, colors sorted
2 tubs of store bought frosting (or make your own butter cream)
Unsweetened cocoa power
Yellow food dye Wilton basket weave tips (47 for cupcakes or 1D for larger cake pies)

Bake 24 cupcakes and let cool completely. 

For the frosting you can make your own or a few cans of store bought vanilla, though in hindsight the homemade buttercream might set up firmer around the edges of the "pie".

Cake, that looks like tiny pies. Adorable!

To your white frosting, place a 1/2 teaspoon of unsweetened cocoa powered and a few drops of yellow food dye into the frosting until you get a "pie crust" type color. Add small amounts of cocoa as needed.

Unsweetened cocoa powder and yellow food dye will give you frosting a "pie crust" peachy color

Frost each cupcake with a bit of the crust colored frosting 

It's sort of an odd shade, a light skin color, or peachy/brown

Then carefully place tiny MnM's in one color (red for "cherry", blue for "blueberry", etc.) My teen had fun doing this.  Once you get the top fully covered in mini MnM's then you are going to pipe a lattice (we used Wilton basket weave tip 47) a few strips one way, 

It looks like little blueberries under a lattice crust

Then a few stripes the opposite way.  Don't worry about the edges, you can cover that up with a little "ruffle" type edging to make it look like a real little pie crust.

Messy edges will be covered up with the next stop

Next, go around the edges of the cupcake with the same tip in a ruffly "edge of the pie" type pattern, mostly a wave pattern.

Blueberry pie! The first time we did this, we used store bought frosting and it got a little warm, but still did an okay effect

Next try a few more colors of "pie filling"

Ooo cherry pie!  We ended doing 4 mini pies of each color

For the orange and yellow MnM's (lemon and pumpkin) pie, we didn't do lattice work for those, and thought they would look nicer with a little blob of white "whipped cream" (white frosting pipped with a star tip).

Twist on the star  tip as you pull up to get that "dollop" look

These tiny pies started to look pretty good as we did the different flavors

Did someone order a chocolate mini pie cupcake?

We put a variety on a sheet pan and it turned out to be a great way to display them.

The teens went gaga over these little beauties.

My middle was turning 14.  These number candles fit in one pie perfectly

We had a little left over batter, so I decided to pour it into a full-sized pie pan and then we whipped up a pretend pumpkin pie, which was the birthday girl's favorite pie in the fall.  It looked pretty realistic when we were done. (Note: We took the extra pie crust frosting, which already had that brown crust hue, separated it and put red and yellow food coloring in it until it resembled a pumpkin color). More white dollops of white frosting with the flower tip to give it some flair.

Fake pumpkin pie cake... looks pretty realistic

Here it is all lit up with candlelight

Happy pumpkin pie funfetti cake to you...

See, it really was cake all along.

Great for any holiday, even April Fools!

I hope you liked our little fake out fun food here.  We had a blast making these together, and there's not a ton of activities you can do with your teen where they are chatting and enjoying themselves making tiny food.