We were lucky to catch up with Mary Jayne Buckingham recently and have shared our conversation below.

Alright, Mary Jayne thanks for taking the time to share your stories and insights with us today. Who is your hero and why? What lessons have you learned from them and how have they influenced your journey?

I would have to say that my mom is my hero. Her name was Betty Lou and I lost her when I was 19. She’s actually the reason I know how to cook. You know everyone has that one house in the family that you go to for all the holidays and big events, our house was that house.

Most kids get excited for Halloween for the candy. Of course I got excited for the candy, but my main reason for getting excited was because I knew that the next day my mom would start getting ready for Thanksgiving, Christmas and people stopping by.

This was back in the late ’60s early ’70s when you still stopped by just to visit and have happy hour, appetizers and snacks.

Mom always had something in the freezer that she could pull out at any moment. Usually involved some type of cookie or fudge or divinity. Something wonderful and sweet. She made the best sugar cookies. They were thin and golden brown around the edges with just a little bit of chewiness in the center and melted in your mouth like butter.

She would always make things ahead and freeze them. Dad and I would sneak and get cookies out of the freezer. On a particular day I went looking for Dad. There he was over by his workbench which coincidentally happened to be right next to the freezer. Which is where I found him looking like a chipmunk!

Needless to say a few days later while he was watching TV and I was walking through the living room, I hear my mom in the garage yell George Emmett!! I knew she had found the cookies and the dent we had made in them. He looked at me with this sheepish grin and said “RUN”!

My mother and her family were a tremendous influence on me over the years of my life without me really knowing it. Everyone in my family had their respective culinary items that they were really good at. My Aunt was chocolate cream pie. My dad was peanut butter fudge. My mom well pretty much everything.

In getting ready for the holidays family would come over everyone in the kitchen making different things. Once things were done putting them up packing them away in the Tupperware with the wax paper to put them in the freezer. It was like watching art in motion.

During the summer we would Can or as Granny would say were going to “put up” some tomatoes, okra, Chow Chow. It was a family event. My aunt would come down from Austin and she and my mom would go to the different vendors and farmers markets gather all of our vegetables and my uncle would come up from New Orleans to join.

I remember them spending two or three days with big pots in the kitchen canning and putting up everything. So cooking and being together as a family has always been an integral part of my life.

Most everything I make is some type of family recipe or something that my mother created.

Mary Jayne , before we move on to more of these sorts of questions, can you take some time to bring our readers up to speed on you and what you do?

My name is Mary Jayne Buckingham but most people know me as The Pie Queen. I sit in my trailer with a crown on my head. I decided when I married, with the last name like Buckingham I had to be the queen of something. I am the owner, operator, pie tin stuffer, grocery shopper, customer service representative, and all around Pie Queen for Cutie Pies and The Cutie Pie Wagon located in beautiful downtown Bastrop Texas at the Chestnut Grove Food Court.

I’m a two-time National Pie Champion competing against 300+ bakers from all across America. In 2020 I took my Peach Key Lime Habanero pie (National Pie Champion) to MasterChef and won my white apron. It was so good that Chef Ramsay licked the plate! Paula Deen was also judging that day and she said she thought my Key Lime Pie was better than hers. I laughed and said “thank you kindly but no ma’am, your Paula Deen. I’m just Mary Jayne but could you look in that camera right over there and say that again please”! Winning that apron made me one of the top 15 home Cooks in America.

Prior to being The Pie Queen and making some of the best homemade pies you ever wanted to put in your mouth, I was in nursing for a number of years working for various different agencies including Hospice Austin.

Shortly after I had started a new job I had lunch with my boss and she mentioned that she makes the best Buttermilk pie around. Pretty sure at that point I looked at her like she had six heads. I immediately informed her no you don’t, my mama does!

She suggested that I put my money where my mouth was and enter the signature Pie contest that the famous Driskill Hotel was holding looking for an amateur Baker that could make a pie good enough to put on their menu at the 1886 Cafe and Bakery.

Never being a girl to shy away from a dare, I entered, I won and Betty Lou’s Buttermilk pie appeared on the 1886 Cafe and bakery menu. Needless to say while I loved being in nursing it really ignited my fire and my passion for wanting to make pie and that became my main focus taking me out of nursing and into pie making.

I wanted to open my own pie shop so a food trailer was going to be the only option. I found a wooden wagon on Craigslist that a gentleman hauled his motorcycle in and my husband built a wooden box on top of the wagon. We cut out a window out and put a household refrigerator in and the Cutie Pie Wagon was born.

I like to tell people I sell homemade pie from a homemade trailer. I’d like to think that’s what sets me apart, sticking to my roots. I’m making family recipes from a trailer that family built.

I grew up watching some amazing Cooks in my family do what they did best and almost everything that I make with a few exceptions is a family recipe but I do have a few of my own. I think I got my love of that from my mom so I am constantly thinking of new recipes and putting new things together.

My mom was never one to stand on ceremony. If there was a recipe that she liked and we were out she would go ask the chef for the recipe. This was back in the ’60s at a time when you just didn’t do that, but she did. She would write recipes on anything she could find. Napkins, back of her checkbook anything that she could get recipes down on she did.

I have always felt it’s important to carry on your family traditions and your family recipes, even ones written on the back of a checkbooks. I really think that that’s what makes Cutie Pies work. I would like to think that you can taste the love, time, patience and effort that’s put into every pie I make.

Staying true to my family’s recipes and the way that things have always been done is one of the things that I am most proud of. In this day and age of hurry up and get things done faster, the fact that I do things the old-fashioned way, the way I learned is something that I will continually strive for.

Here’s an old lady tip. For all the youngsters or millennials out there, Bless Your Hearts, I know y’all love to blowtorch everything but meringue is not meant to be blowed torched, it is meant to be cooked and browned gently in the oven!

I have won a number of awards and have been featured in a number of magazines. Taste of the South, Martha Stewart Magazine, Southern Living Magazine and while I am the 2013 and 2015 National Pie Champion and MasterChef, I would have to say that the one that I am absolutely just tickled pink about is Southern Living Magazine.

In 2010 Southern Living did an article on the best pies in the South. Betty Lou’s Buttermilk pie came in fourth. Being from the South and of that ’60s and ’70s generation, that award is like pure gold!

While I love having my food trailer, I find myself moving more into wedding catering. Brides are looking for something that will set their wedding apart. Having pies for your dessert table as well as whole pies for the bride and grooms desserts is really catching on. Everyone wants their wedding day to be a special day and to stand out in people’s memories. Brides are beginning to ditch the more traditional cakes in favor of pies.

They find that it gives everyone more options. From the larger whole pies for the bride and groom to the small 4.5 inch mini pies for their guest down to the itty bitty bites for the smaller guests. Back in the day my mom and grandmother used to call the itty bitty bites tassies.

I make a wide variety of sizes and flavors and at the risk of sounding like Bubba Gump, I make sweet pies, savory pies, pot pies, Quiches just about any pie you could imagine. If you can think it up I can make it!

Alright – let’s talk about marketing or sales – do you have any fun stories about a risk you’ve taken or something else exciting on the sales and marketing side?

Making the pies that I make and the recipes that I use were specifically done to honor the memory of my mother, Betty Lou. My mother was diagnosed with ovarian cancer and 3 months later I was diagnosed with cervical cancer so as you can imagine it became a question of who was going to be here and who would not. Unfortunately mom lost her battle.

Since I was using my mother’s recipes and her Buttermilk pie was essentially the catalyst that got this started, my idea was to call my trailer Betty Lou’s pies and treats.

On a particular day when I was getting my DBA, I had stopped at Costco to pick up some things and was speaking to the checkout girl. I explained I was going to be opening a trailer making homemade pie. She asked me the name. I told her I’m toying with two names. “Tell me both of the names and I’ll tell you which one I like the best”. I threw out both of the names. Betty Lou’s Pies and Treats or Cutie Pies. She looked at me and said “Cutie Pies”.

I said “yes but Betty Lou’s Pies and Treats is after my mother”. She looked at me and said “I understand but I’ve already forgotten that name but I remembered Cutie Pies.”

Instantly I knew that she was correct. To make sure my compass was pointing in the right direction I called my sister and said think we need to make a name change, told her about the conversation and she immediately agreed.

From that point on my little marketing brain seem to go into overdrive and Cutie Pies and The Pie Wagon were born. As my dad was in the Air Force and I was raised in Europe, being over there people would say shut your pie hole a lot so again my marketing brain went into overdrive. How could I turn that into something that would be family-friendly. Then it hit me “come on down to the pie wagon where you can stuff your pie hole because my pies will put the doo-dah back in your zippity.” And there it was…….my tagline.

I wanted something that would stick out in people’s minds. I knew good and well once people had my pies and tasted them they would be hooked. I just needed something to get them to come to the trailer to have the pies in the first place.

I don’t remember your name young lady at Costco but thank you very much for pointing me in the right direction. You never know when an off the cuff remark could be the step that would change your direction and your life forever.

We often hear about learning lessons – but just as important is unlearning lessons. Have you ever had to unlearn a lesson?

I would say that one of the main things that I have had to learn being in the Food business is you have to be able to Punt! You have to be able to roll with the punches. I can promise you that everything you think……. you better throw it out the window.

I don’t care how much you plan how much you prep how much you do the work, invariably something is going to go wrong. Something will not show up. An ingredient you won’t have that you desperately need or can’t find.

Anytime you are doing anything in the food business you better have a plan A, plan B, C and have D in your back pocket just in case. I can promise you that just as sure as the world plan A goes out the window B will go down the drain and something will happen to C and if you don’t have D in your back pocket you’re going under the bus.

Things go wrong and you better be able to pivot on a dime. You always, always have to have a contingency plan that you can implement on a moment’s notice and make it look effortless.

That being said even though you have the contingency, when things go wrong and they will, you need to let it go run with your backup plan. Get through whatever event or issue that you’re having at the moment to make sure that you are able to carry through.

Many times being in the food industry when things do start going wrong even though we have a backup plan we get so focused on what’s going wrong that we don’t correct and run with our backup plan so that things can still come out smoothly.

That was one of the hardest lessons for me to unlearn. Not focus on what had gone wrong but to be able to redirect my attention to whatever my backup plans were and try to make the issue or the situation turn out as best as it possibly could while still pleasing the clients.

At the end of the day getting to be able to do something that I love, honor my family, make people happy and bring them Joy with the food I prepare is amazing and incredibly gratifying.

I would just like to say thank you to everyone who has and will come to the trailer and has my mom’s pie. Before she passed away she had wanted to have all of her recipes together for a cookbook. So my father, sister and Aunt got her recipes together which was no small feat. Recipes written on napkins, checkbooks etc… we made a cookbook just for family and friends. That’s my Bible that I cook from still to this day.

If you’re ever in Bastrop stop by the Chestnut Grove Food Court where you can “come on down to the pie wagon where you can stuff your pie hole because my pie put the doo-dah back in your zippity!”

Contact Info:

• Instagram: @maryjaynethepiequeen
• Facebook: CutiePieWagon (Bastrop)