Last night as I was trying to fall asleep I came up with the great idea of the cuppie! The cuppie is a cupcake sized pie. As I've recently expressed, I love pie making however, I find having to slice pie and eat it with a fork makes it difficult for me to share my pies. So as I was stumbling into a slumber and probably inspired from buying a new cupcake pan, the idea of making a pie in a cupcake pan crossed my mind. Sadly, after searching Google, I am not the first to invent the cuppie or even think of that name (but I applaud myself for thinking of it on my own).
So today, with the idea fresh in mind, I made oatmeal cuppies. I made a pie dough and filled each cupcake hole with a pie crust (I even fluted the edges). This was cumbersome to roll out 12 individual doughs and flute the edges but the final result was worth the extra time. I tried a new pie filling, oatmeal. There are a lot of oatmeal pie recipes out there but I made a maple, walnut, and coconut oatmeal pie. I filled the twelve cups and had nearly half the filling left over, so you could probably make 16-18 cuppies with a standard 9 in pie filling recipe.
The main difference between a cuppie and a pie is the baking. Since this was my first time making cuppies I continually checked up on the cuppies. My cuppies took about 25 minutes to bake, which is about the time a regular cupcake should take. The cuppies came out adorable and delicious! I think they are the perfect individual size and I ate mine just like a cupcake, so a fork or plate was unnecessary.
The Cuppie vs The Pie
When I discovered the cuppie idea, I immediately thought that I would make all of my pies into cuppies because they seem much more convenient but after seeing the final result my mind changed. Cuppies are an easy snack however, they cannot replace the pie. Your cuppie will taste wonderful but it just will not be the same as eating a slice of pie. Even though the same ingredients are used for the cuppie as for a pie, just eating the cuppie in a different way than a pie will make the experience particular (at least this was my reaction). But I think most things in life are like that, just like how my peppermint tea that I make at home never tastes as good as it does when I order it in a coffee shop. Even though I loved that the cute cuppie was basically a pie that could be eaten with just your hands, I will not be replacing the pie with the cuppie.
Could you spare some change?
How I came up with the idea of the cuppie is not too distant from how I generally go about life. There was something about pie that I did not like (it is more difficult to enjoy than something like a cookie) so I chose to change it (the cuppie). I am quite the constructive person so when I see something that can be improved, I try to make it better. Instead of accepting that pie should be served a single way, I attempted to experiment with a different kind of pie.
What I learned from the cuppie? I learned that I can change something but it will not replace the original. The cuppie is not a replacement for the pie but rather a fun and tasty substitute. I hope I'm not giving the wrong impression; I did savor and respect the cuppie but it just wasn't pie.
So can I spare some change? By changing the pie I created a new indulgence but change is hard. It would be hard for me to accept the cuppie as a replacement to pie making but at the same time the cuppie is a refreshing, exciting change to the conventional pie.
How I feel about the cuppie and change parallels change in my day to day life. I am always eager to change routines or details of my life. I am excited by the prospect of change but change is generally in the short term. I quickly fall back into habits, just like I will quickly fall back into pie-making.
The question now is can you spare some change?
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