DIY Apple Pie Candle: How to Make One That Actually Smells

Most homemade candles are a bit of a let-down. They look lovely on the shelf, you light one expecting the room to fill with something warm and spiced, and forty minutes later you're still only smelling it if you put your nose directly over the jar.

That's almost always down to three things, and none of them are the fragrance oil.

I'll come to all three. But the short version is that a DIY apple pie candle is genuinely easy to make and genuinely difficult to make well, and the difference between the two comes down to temperature, wick size, and patience. Get those right and you end up with something that fills a kitchen properly, costs a fraction of a shop-bought equivalent, and doesn't look homemade in the slightly sad, primary-school-craft-table way.

This is the kind of project I like. Low outlay, high return, and you get to keep making them once the kit is bought.

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Why most homemade candles smell of nothing

Three culprits.

The first is adding fragrance oil at the wrong temperature. Pour it into wax that's too hot and a good chunk of it evaporates before the candle has even set. Pour it into wax that's too cool and it doesn't bind properly, which is why some homemade candles sweat little beads of oil on the surface afterwards.

The second is the wick. A jar with a 7cm opening needs a much bigger wick than most beginner kits supply. If the wick is too small the melt pool never reaches the glass, the candle tunnels down the middle, and you get a fraction of the scent throw you should.

The third is not waiting. Soy wax needs to cure, which means sitting untouched for a week or two while the fragrance binds into the wax. Almost every tutorial online tells you to light it the next day. Do that and you'll be disappointed, then blame the recipe.

What you'll need

The upfront cost is the only real barrier here, and it's a one-off. After the first candle you're looking at somewhere around £4 to £5 a go, which is a decent saving against the £30 to £50 you'd spend on a nice bought one.

• Soy container wax flakes. Look for a container blend rather than a pillar blend. Golden Wax 464 is the reliable workhorse if you can find it.
• A candle pouring pot. A metal jug with a lip that sits inside a pan of water. You can improvise with a Pyrex jug, but the pouring lip is worth it.
• Cotton wicks with tabs, in a few sizes. Buy a mixed pack. You will need to test.
• A wick centring tool, or two chopsticks and an elastic band.
• Apple pie fragrance oil. Buy candle-specific fragrance oil, not essential oil and not food flavouring. Neither behaves properly in wax.
• A digital thermometer. A cheap cooking probe is fine.
• Digital kitchen scales.
• Jars. Mason or Kilner style jars are the classic choice and hold up well to heat. Old candle jars work beautifully once cleaned out, as do sturdy jam jars.

Everything on this list is on the favourites page if you'd rather not go hunting.

A note on the jars: thin decorative glass is not your friend. Anything with a chip or a hairline crack goes in the recycling, not on the worktop with a flame in it.

The bit everyone gets wrong

Soy wax has three temperatures that matter, and a thermometer costs about six pounds. This is the whole game.

Melt to 80°C. Fully liquid, no cloudy patches.

Cool to 65°C, then add fragrance. Stir slowly for a full two minutes. Properly two minutes, not a quick swirl. You're binding the oil into the wax and undermixing is a real cause of weak scent throw.

Pour at 55°C to 60°C. Pouring hotter than this is what causes the sinkholes and the rough, cratered tops you see on homemade candles.

How to make an apple pie candle

Work out your wax quantity first. Fill your empty jar with water, weigh it, and multiply by 0.8. That gives you roughly the weight of wax you need. A standard mason jar usually lands somewhere around 200g.

1. Fix the wick. Dab a little glue or a wick sticker on the metal tab and press it firmly into the centre of the base. Hold for ten seconds. Thread the wick up through your centring tool and rest it across the rim.
2. Melt the wax. Weigh your flakes into the pouring pot and sit it in a pan of gently simmering water. Bring it to 80°C. Don't rush it with direct heat.
3. Weigh the fragrance. Aim for 8% of your wax weight. For 200g of wax, that's 16g of oil. Most soy container waxes will hold between 6% and 10%, and going above that doesn't make it smell stronger, it just leaves unbound oil sitting on top.
4. Cool, then scent. Take the pot off the heat and let it drop to 65°C. Add the fragrance oil and stir slowly for two minutes.
5. Pour at 55°C to 60°C. Steady and slow, in one go, leaving about 1.5cm of space at the top.
6. Leave it alone. Somewhere flat, out of a draught, away from a radiator. Twenty-four hours to set.
7. Trim the wick to 5mm. Then put it away and forget about it for two weeks.

That last step is the one that separates a candle you're pleased with from one you quietly stop lighting.

Getting the wick right

This is where most first attempts go wrong, and it's worth accepting that you might need two goes.

A regular-mouth mason jar has an internal diameter of around 6.8cm to 7cm. That's a wide candle. You're looking at something in the CD-12 to CD-16 range, or an ECO-10 upwards, depending on the brand. Some people run two smaller wicks side by side instead, which gives a better melt pool in a wide vessel and looks rather smart.

The test is simple. On the first burn, the melted wax should reach the edge of the glass within two to three hours. If it doesn't, your wick is too small and the candle will tunnel for the rest of its life. If the flame is tall, flickering and giving off soot, it's too big.

The honest downsides of soy

Soy is lovely to work with and it's what I'd recommend for a first attempt, but it isn't flawless and you should know what you're getting.

It frosts. Those white crystalline patches that appear on the surface and up the sides after a few days are entirely normal and entirely cosmetic, but they do look a bit like the candle has gone off. Pouring cooler and warming your jars slightly beforehand reduces it.

It gets wet spots. Little patches where the wax pulls away from the glass. Again, cosmetic, and again worse if your room is cold when you pour.

And soy holds less fragrance than paraffin, which is the trade-off for it being a cleaner burn. An 8% load in soy will not smell as aggressive as a cheap supermarket candle. It'll smell better, but it won't punch you in the face from the hallway.

Making it look worth more than it cost

A candle in a plain jar looks like a candle in a plain jar. Two small things fix that.

Wipe the outside of the glass with a little methylated spirit before you pour, which removes the fingerprints and grease that make homemade candles look cloudy. And keep the top surface flat by pouring at the right temperature, because a smooth, even surface reads as expensive in a way that's hard to explain but immediately obvious.

If you're gifting them, a plain kraft label with the scent and the date handwritten on it does more than any amount of ribbon. Or you can get a little more creative and paint the jar in chalk paint.

Burning it properly

First burn is the important one. Give it two to three hours, or however long it takes for the melt pool to reach the glass all the way round. Whatever the candle does on the first burn is roughly what it'll do every time after.

Trim the wick to 5mm before every single burn. Stop when there's about 1cm of wax left, because below that the flame gets too close to the base of the glass.

And if you've made one for a bathroom or a small bedroom, halve the fragrance load. Apple pie in a confined space at 8% is a lot.

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If you like this sort of thing, the same principles apply to any scent you fancy. Fig, woodsmoke, and black tea are all worth trying once you've got the kit in.