Cherry Pie ala Kathleen

 

This awesome work of faux pastry was made by Kathleen Ballos, a young propster and one of our neighbors to the north.  I'll let her tell you about it.

Katleen writes;

"The cherry pie was something I just something I made at home for fun because I didn't have a job at the time. That being said, I used things that were affordable and very non-toxic (it was too cold to work outside for ventilation). I used salt dough for the pastry - I made the bottom layer like a normal pie (but cut a slice out and put it on a separate pie plate to bake) and covered the bottom with dried beans and foil, then arranged the lattice on top (I also cut a slice of the lattice and placed it on top of foil on the other pie plate).

After it was baked, I cut styrofoam to fit both the large pie and the slice and used Crayola Model Magic to form the cherry filling over the styrofoam. While I was doing it, I could tell that the foaminess of the model magic wasn't going to be the most accurate way to recreate the cherry filling, but using a tiny bit of water to smooth the edges of the cherries helped a bit. However, when it dried little crevices formed, but were hidden by paint and the lattice. On the plus side, the model magic allowed the filling to stay light-weight.

The lattice was a bit tricky - when I baked it, I didn't think to press the intersections together or to use water to help strengthen them, so it was pretty fragile. The salt dough reacted alright to hot glue, but it wasn't very strong. Finally, I painted the cherry filling and the shell, then glued the layers together."

Delightful!  If you'd like to see more of Kathleen's craft work, you can visit her Flickr page here.