How I Made My Faux Pumpkin Pies

Friday, September 10, 2021

How I Made My Faux Pumpkin Pies

Pumpkin everything season is officially here and what better way to add charm to our kitchen and dining displays than with these adorable mini faux pumpkin pies?

Read on to see how easy you can create some yourself using salt dough and spackle:

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Using salt dough and some mini cake tins, I pressed the dough into tiny shells and baked at 250 for about an hour until dry.

Salt Dough:

2 cups flour

1 cup salt

1 cup water

My goal was to create a cavity to hold the filling, and you can see that it worked, but since this project I have figured out a better way. Instead of creating a bowl shape that requires a lot more of the spackle pie filling, fill your container mostly with the salt dough instead. Once the salt dough is dry you will now need less of the pie filling (which is more expensive) and the pie filling itself will need less drying time.

When It came time to mix up my filling I combined acrylic paint with lightweight spackle (joint compound). Not having the exact shade of brown that I was going for on hand, I decided to create my own with one part yellow and one part orange. I also added in some ground cinnamon so that the finished pies would smell good.

*Note - Cinnamon is naturally pest repellant so using the spice won't draw bugs to your displays.

Here you can see the salt dough shells and their spackle pie filling. Because my shells were made to be deep I needed more of the pie filling to complete them. If you imagine that the shells were mostly comprised of salt dough with just a small indentation, then you can see how I would have been able to get away with a lot less of the pie filling.

*Side Note - Though the pies pictured here dried nicely there is always a chance that spackle can crack during the drying process. The more spackle you use the greater the chances are of this cracking happening. Therefore using less pie filling not only saves you more expensive materials, but helps to keep the finished product looking it's best. If your spackle does crack, wait until the item is completely dry and then add another small layer to cover any imperfections.

*Tip - While salt dough is a wonderful and inexpensive material to work with, it must be kept dry for preservation. Because the spackle contains moisture, you are essentially adding water to your previously dried dough. This rewets the dough and if not allowed to re-dry properly can ruin the piece. I like to place my items on cooling racks to ensure full air circulation and leave them to dry for days at a time. With larger pieces, such as thick pies, I'll let them sit for over a month to fully dry before putting them into storage containers. When completely dry it's best to keep your pieces in air tight storage containers to prevent any moisture buildup. If they aren't fully dry before you seal them up though....a whole lot of icky stuff starts to happen. I learned this lesson the hard way! 😌

Once my spackle filling was dry I added another dollop of plain white spackle to serve as a whipped cream topping. A generous sprinkling of some more cinnamon and the pies were good to go.

And there you have it - cute little decorative pies that smell good too!

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Want more fake bake fun?

Faux Cupcakes

Faux Cupcakes: Candy Series