A self-taught baker makes incredible Halloween pies decorated with characters from your favorite spooky movies

"I became really desperate for some form of dessert that I could actually eat without cheating," she told Insider in an earlier interview. "I knew that I could theoretically make a decent-tasting pie using just apples, spices, and unsweetened shortcrust pastry — I just had no experience in the kitchen."

After making her very first pie with a box of Crisco and a recipe, Clark-Bojin was pleased with the result.

"It was pretty good!" she said. "I happened to cut out the shape of a dragon on top and my family thought that was neat, so I kept making artsy designs for my pie tops."

Now the self-taught baker posts her creations on Instagram under her account The Pieous.

"I love Halloween," Clark-Bojin said. "I have so many amazing memories from childhood and teenagerhood ... The holiday is an excuse to explore taboos and be unapologetically yourself."

The pie top features an extreme likeness of Angelina Jolie's character, painted with maple syrup to get a leather-like look.

This pie was inspired by "The Nightmare Before Christmas."

Some of Clark-Bojin's pies are full productions, like this carousel featuring characters from the movie. The carousel features two different pies — pecan on the bottom, pumpkin on the top, according to the baker's Instagram.

This pie inspired by "Predator" is downright horrifying.

She chose a "spoke" design for the background and documented the process on Instagram.

"It took me a few tries to get it right ... but I learned a ton from the process," she wrote. "Failure is always my best teacher — as long as I eventually figure it out!"

"I just love that show so much — it's so charming and weird," she told Insider. "It's a rock fact!"

"Dropping off a pie to a friend or neighbor's house is about as old as friends and neighbors … and mercifully, it has remained one of the few activities still safely open to us during the pandemic," she told Insider.

"It's a simple, back to basics way of expressing oneself creatively and engaging in something unambiguously good," she said. "What's happening in the world right now, politically, environmentally, socially, is very important … but we can't all be dialed up to 11 all the time."

Clark-Bojin has a video tutorial on Instagram showing how to make this pie — she said her 6-year-old son did most of the work on it.

"If you're ready to have a go at your first scratch-made pie, I recommend starting with shortening because it has the highest melting point of all the fats. Plus it's vegan — bonus!" she said. "This means you have more time to fiddle around with your design and you don't have to worry as much about the dough getting tough. It also puffs up the least in the oven."

"All-butter crusts can still make lovely designs — you might just have to pop your work in the freezer periodically for a minute or two to keep the butter from melting," Clark-Bojin said.

She recommends Kate McDermott's half leaf-lard, half butter recipe, and Karin Pfeiff-Boschek's butter and carbonated water recipe.

Bakers can tag their photos with #MonsterPie to share their designs.

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