Baking a miniature apple pie

Fetch your apron, ’cause we’re going to bake a little something. And by little I do mean really small: a miniature apple pie. If that sounds appetizing, be warned that it is most certainly not the kind of apple pie that you’ll want to take a bite of, as it’ll be made out of clay and might cost you a tooth. This pie is just for pretty-sake, to serve in a dollhouse, a fairy garden or some such. That said, we do want to make it look as scrumptious as we can, as the point is to sell the illusion of the real thing. So follow along as I walk you through the “recipe” for the perfect looking miniature apple pie.

To make the miniature apple pie, you only need a few basic materials, some of which you might already have in your craft drawer. Moreover, what’s nice about making something so tiny is that it only takes a spoonful of this and a smidgen of that, leaving plenty still for future crafting projects. Here’s what I used for the pie pictured above:

When it comes to painting the miniature apple pie, there are different options too. For this project, I opted for pastels, but with acrylic paint you should be able to achieve similar results. That is, if you add the next ingredient to the mix…

With a glossy acrylic medium, you bring the finishing touch. A twofold touch, actually. Firstly, this medium takes the miniature apple pie from looking a tad dull to looking appetizingly vibrant. At the same time, you also alleviate its dry appearance by adding a shiny finish. Scrumptious! With our ingredients covered, let’s look at what tools to use.

Lastly, we’ll need a cake pan, or something that’ll serve as a basis for creating one. I went with the latter approach. Given that I wanted to make a miniature apple pie with a diameter of roughly 2 cm (or 0.8″), I looked through my craft drawer to find a round object with a similar diameter, that could function as a mold. And I happened to have a glue stick that did the job.

Alternatively, you could use the crown cap from a glass beer bottle or soda bottle. Being made of metal, shallow and with their crimped edges, these caps look great as cake pans. Besides, there’s just something uniquely fun about repurposing things to make miniatures.

With everything set, we now get to the fun bit of the project: let’s get creating. The first step is to prepare the tin for the little pie. As mentioned above, there are different things you could use as a cake pan, and the preparation process will look a bit different for each. If you use a metal crown cap, or a 3D-printed tin, you can give it a gray or black coat of paint with a metallic finish (see this post for some paint recommendations).

Alternatively, you could make it from scratch, like I did for this project. I molded a piece of polymer clay into the shape of a round cake pan, using the cap of a glue stick as an aid to create a circular base with straight sides. With an art knife, I cut the excess clay off in a straight line across, leaving the sides about 5 mm tall (0.2″). I wanted my cake pan to look a little more decorative, so I used a sculpting tool to create vertical ridges along the sides.

Next, having carefully removed the clay pan from the glue stick, it was time for its first oven experience: for about 30 minutes at 110 ℃ (230 ℉). Once it was hardened, I painted the cake pan with some black pastel mixed with water. This gave it a matte, old, dark-grayish appearance, like it already had some years of cake-baking adventures under its belt. Personally, I quite liked it like that, but if you prefer a more shiny finish for the cake pan, that can be achieved with some varnish at a later stage.

Now that the tin is ready, you can take a fresh piece of clay and get started with the actual pie to fill it with. While you’re kneading the clay to soften it, a handy trick is to add some pie-colored paint to it, which gives the clay an even color as you blend it in. This way, your clay will already look dough-like, making the later painting stage easier. As to what color to mix in, I recommend looking up some photos of actual apple pies online. Choose one that looks particularly appetizing to you, and identify the color of the lightest parts of the pie crust. This is the color you’ll want to try to replicate for your clay at this stage. The darker bits will be added later in the painting step.

With the “dough” ready, you’ll insert it into the cake pan to create the sides of the pie. Keep in mind here that a home-baked pie typically doesn’t have a perfectly even crust. There will be some parts that are more bulged up than others, so you can go for a more playful approach in molding it. A bit of unevenness will work in its favor, as long as it doesn’t come out looking as a thin, flat crust. As with a real apple pie, you also cover the bottom of the tin. I suggest being generous with the clay here, so you don’t leave a whole lot to fill with tiny apple pieces. You get the same visual end result, without making the work more fussy than needed.

Using another piece of clay, it’s time to make the apple pieces for filling of the miniature apple pie. As with the crust, it’s handy to mix in some paint to have the clay resembling the color of the fruit. To create the individual pieces of apple, simply shape the dough into a long, thin roll, and cut off small slices. Next, use some brown paint to give each apple piece a touch of oven-baked, cinnamon-kissed accents. After that, you pick them up one by one with your tweezers and place them into the pie, filling it up.

The last addition to the pie is the best bit: the top crust. For me, apple pies and the lattice crust are pretty much synonymous, so I made that one. But if you’d like your miniature apple pie to look different, or perhaps want to make a variety of pies, there are several other pretty shapes you can make for your pie crust.

As for the lattice crust, you start by rolling out a piece of clay, and cutting it into even strips. Double check if your strips are long enough to span the diameter of the cake pan, and then weave them into the lattice pattern. I went ahead and applied a few touches of paint, but you can also leave this for after the pie has been baked. Wrap it up by moving the lattice crust onto the pie, cutting off the excess clay, and integrating the strips into the sides with a sculpting tool.

The miniature apple pie is almost ready to be baked, but there is one more thing you can do before its shape is final: texturing. If you look closely at your little creation, you might notice that some parts of the crust look a little too smooth, while you might spot your fingerprints on other parts. An actual apple pie, after it’s baked, is quite textured, so let’s try to mimic that to make it look a little more realistic.

There’s no need for fancy tools to apply a bit of texture. If you have a spare toothbrush, it will do a pretty good job at adding little indentations in the clay. And, in case there are a couple of stubborn fingerprints, you can dip a paint brush into some rubbing alcohol and brush over them to smoothen the clay surface. Once your pie has a nice texture going on, it is finally ready to be placed in the oven: just like a regular old pie! Honestly, there’s something so cute about seeing your teeny tiny creation in the oven, looking all deceivingly pie-like. Bake it for about 45 minutes, at 110℃ (or 230℉).

Once your miniature apple pie is finished getting baked, it’s time for the finishing touches. My pie, for one, needed some better-looking darkened areas on the crust. As my earlier paint job had dried, the red tones had become too prominent, and it looked too dull overall. In other words, a little unappetizing for an apple pie. I wasn’t going to be able to fix it with pastels mixed with water, which I had been using until this point, but this is where our last ingredient came in. I now mixed my pastels with acrylic medium instead, which gave the colors the lasting vibrance they had been lacking, as well as the sheen that suits a well-baked pie crust.

So, do not feel disheartened when your own pie comes out of the oven not looking quite as scrumptious as a normal pie would. After all, the end result of this kind of pie is not so much a reflection of your baking skills, but of a couple of tricks to create a miniature likeness. It’s with painting and glazing that you make much of the magic happen. For more on that, be sure to also have a look at my article about the process of painting miniatures to make them look realistic.

That’s it for this little baking project. Even though we don’t get to enjoy the heavenly smell of an actual apple pie as it gets baked, nor the treat of actually gobbling it up, doing this craft is a pleasure in its own right. That said, you might find yourself heating up that oven for another round, to address those apple pie cravings with a proper sized, edible one!