Move over, cupcake: Pies new dessert darling

For years, gourmet cupcakes have been the cool kids on the food block. Magazines, TV shows and blogs created an insatiable appetite for cute cuppies with funky names and odd flavors.

Is it time for a new obsession?

Like a pointy slice of pie, signs are pointing in that direction.

Williams-Sonoma during the holidays sold out of a Panini-like countertop pie press that makes pocket pies. The manufacturer won't have new ones until March.

In Michigan, Achatz Handmade Pie Co. is cleaning up by selling wedding pies for bridal receptions.

At the recipe archive AllRecipes.com, pies both sweet and savory were the fastest-growing search segment last year. The No. 1 term: quiche.

At Mike's Pies in Tampa, revenues jumped 18 percent in 2010 during a down economy. The year before that, it was 20 percent. The gourmet piemaker moved in January, after 20 years in business, to a 30,000-square-foot facility near Leto High School. Its 12,500-square-foot space wasn't enough to keep up with demand.

Owner Mike Martin says the key is getting potential customers to taste their Apple Crumb, Southern Pecan and Reese's Crunch Peanut Butter pies. The company sells to distributors in 35 states as far away as Hawaii. If you've eaten a slice of "Killer" Key Lime at one of Jimmy Buffet's Margaritaville restaurants, you've had a Mike's Pie.

"Get it into their mouth and you're going to get their business," Martin says.

Helene Dujardin has heard the rumbles that maybe pies are the new cupcake. Mini-pies, like tarts, pocket pies and hand pies, appear to be moving in on the hallowed baking ground occupied by cakes and cookies.

"I thought, 'What do you mean it's the new cupcake?'" Dujardin says. "They've always been around!'"

Dujardin is a South Carolina food photographer and former pastry chef who authors the award-winning food blog Tartlette (www.tartletteblog.com). The title comes from her nickname, which she earned while baking her grandmother's apricot pie as a little girl growing up in France.

Visitors to her site seem to be intrigued by the pies and tarts she photographs, more so than other foods. The blog math is simple: Chocolate + Tarts = Crazy Blog Traffic .

Dujardin baked large pies while working in a restaurant, but then switched to smaller versions that were prettier and more personal.

"I started making smaller pies and people went crazy," she says. "Plus, you get more crust that way.

"Come on! You've gotta love the crust!"

She says she most enjoys the versatility of the ingredients she can use, and the fact smaller pies are easier to personalize.

She did just that for a pie party she threw recently, making individual pies for friends based on the ingredients they liked. At a summer barbecue last year, she brought pies instead of cupcakes.

"My first reaction was: French people don't do cupcakes," she says. "It's better than making a cake and dividing by 12."

Plus, pie possibilities are seemingly endless. Don't have tart molds? Use muffin tins as pie pans. Put some dough in the bottom of a muffin liner for the crust and add your favorite filling.

"What people are realizing with pies is that they don't have to be your Grandma's pies or Mom's pies," Dujardin says. "They can be square or rectangular, have top or not have top."

Her recipe for an "easy lazy pie" is to take leftover dough from whatever else she's been baking, fill it with jam, fold it over and, voila! Pie!

"You can make it as simple as you want," she says.

Bakers clearly are looking for options. Of the 50,000 recipes submitted by users at BakeSpace.com, about 1,300 are for pie, compared to 600 for cupcakes, creator Babette Pepaj says.

That doesn't mean pies are overtaking cupcakes, she says. A recent Cupcake Camp she held in Los Angeles was a wild success. And few people are putting candles in birthday pies just yet. Cakes and cookies are an everyday treat. Pies tend to be for holidays still.

In the pie's favor is that even with mediocre crust, the filling can make the dessert satisfying. Not so much with a cuppie. If the frosting's bad, the cupcake's bad, she says.

Pie bakers are beginning to play with the possibilities, similar to the way cupcake flavors became mini-experiments in flavor, says Linda Hoskins, executive director of the American Pie Council.

Each April, the council holds the Crisco National Pie Championships near Walt Disney World. She's seeing more interest from bakers who don't normally compete in the pie contest. That infusion is tweaking the pie world a bit with stencils on crusts, fondant decorations, offbeat flavors such as Red Velvet Pie, and funky names for their creations.

One of the recipe submissions for this year's contest came in with the name "Grandma's Pumpkin Pie," Hoskins says. A few minutes later, the baker came back with a revised name: "Fight Dirty, Live Clean Pie."

"I can't wait to meet this guy," she says.

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