Shrunken Apple Heads

Making shrunken apple heads is one of my favorite Halloween traditions! I remember doing these a couple times when I was a little kid and thinking that they were so silly and so fun. A few years ago I mentioned the idea to my husband who kind of laughed—and then jumped right in when I got started. You will have a blast making them, but you do need to get started because they do need a few weeks to dry:

1st: Peel your apples. (You can leave some skin on them, we left some on to look like hair—but sometimes the skin doesn’t dry as well and might cause molding so it just depends on what you want to do)

2nd: Carve your apples to resemble faces. Make sure that you cut deep. When the apple shrivels up you will lose some of the definition in your cut so make sure to cut everything a bit bigger/deeper than you think it should be.

3rd: Add some white rice for teeth (just push it into the apple and the apple will shrink around it to keep it in place.)

4th: Let them dry. Make sure you either sit them on  a cookie rack, or turn them over every day(ish) so the bottoms don’t get soggy…

Tip: If you want to keep your apple from turning brown you can dip them in lemon juice. I didn’t dip these ones because I like them to get a brown leathery aged look to them as they dry.

Here are some more close-up pics we took right after we carved our apples:

And here are what they look like now (it has been about 2 weeks)

Pretty fun huh!?! HA HA. (These ones aren’t completely dry yet so I’ll have to post again in a few weeks so you can compare them)

You can then do all sorts of stuff with them. Tie them from strings and hang them on your porch, thread them onto a necklace and wear them around your neck for your halloween costume, glue them onto a wreath and hang them on your door. The ideas are endless…and FUN! =)

Happy Shrunken Apple Head Carving!