Waytiffer 50-Pack 4.5 in Foil Mini Pie Tins

What the maker puts in writing

• “HEAVY-DUTY & DURABLE ALUMINUM TIN FOIL --- With these 100% aluminum foil mini pie tins, we provide top quality and durability. The small pie pans won’t bend or fold in during baking”
• “MINI SIZE --- These disposable tart pans measure 4.5 inch diameter on top and 2.5 inch diameter on bottom, The small round baking dishes are a wonderful choice for the making of pies, tarts, cobblers, personal-sized cakes”
• “DISPOSABLE FOR QUICK & EASY, MESS-FREE CLEAN-UP --- …also great for picnics, BBQ’s, camping trips and travel – simply dispose of them after eating!”
• “VALUE THICK BOX PACK OF 50 CAKE PANS FOR THE PANTRY --- …bulk pack of 50 pieces, Stronger than ordinary plastic packaging”
• “RECYCLABLE ENVIRONMENTAL PROTECTION MATERIALS --- Use aluminum foil material which can be recycled”
• From the name: “Pie Pans 4 inch”, “Easily Stack & Store, Freeze & Reheat”
• Reference Waytiffer · Catalog: 109 g (3.8 oz), 114 × 114 × 50 mm (4.49 × 4.49 × 1.97 in)

Three diameters for one pan, and the name is the wrong one

The name says 4 inch. The bullet says 4.5 on top and 2.5 on the bottom. The catalog says 114 × 114 mm, which is 4.49 inches — the top figure, to within a hundredth.

So nothing on this page is actually 4 inches, and the only figure the catalog corroborates is the one in the bullet.

The taper is steep, and that is the real specification.

A 2.5 inch base has an area of about 4.9 square inches. A 4.5 inch top has about 15.9. The base is 31 percent of the top.

Against: the flat part — the bit that holds filling without it sliding down a slope — is small. A “personal-sized” pie in this tin is mostly wall.

In favor: a steep cone is precisely why fifty of them nest into one box, which the bullets sell twice: “Easily Stack & Store” in the name, “bulk pack of 50 pieces” in bullet four. A near-vertical tin does not stack.

The depth is not published. The catalog says 50 mm, about 2 inches, and that is the only number for it.

The same maker does better on its other listing. The Waytiffer foil loaf pan at $9.99 publishes all three dimensions in the bullet — “8.5”L x 4.5” W x 2.5”H” — and the catalog confirms them exactly at 216 × 114 × 64 mm. Two listings, one maker, two standards of disclosure.

Two point two grams of foil, and no gauge behind the heavy-duty claim

“we provide top quality and durability. The small pie pans won’t bend or fold in during baking.”

The catalog weight is 109 grams for fifty tins — 2.18 grams each.

For scale on this shelf:

this — 2.2 g a tin Waytiffer foil loaf pan, $9.99 — 12.0 g a pan (299 g for 25), five and a half times as much foil for roughly four times the plan area GoodCook 9 × 5 steel, $5.99 — 268 g, which is 123 times this tin Amazon Basics six-piece, $31.99 — 302 g a piece (1814 g for six) Elbee eight-piece, $59.99 — 454 g a piece (the only item here to publish its own weight: “8 pounds”)

What is missing is the thickness. Foil is specified in mils or microns, and “heavy-duty” has no threshold behind it. Nothing on this shelf publishes a thickness of anything, foil or steel.

And what makes a shallow foil tin rigid is mostly its shape. The rolled rim and the fluted wall are what stop it folding — both are present on this tin, and neither is mentioned anywhere on the page.

The practical test: carry one filled, by the rim, with one hand. A tin that survives that will not buckle in an oven, where nothing is lifting it.

Twenty cents against six dollars, and they are not substitutes

$9.99 for 50 is 20 cents a tin.

The cheapest steel pan on this shelf is $5.99. The cheapest steel per piece is the Amazon Basics set at $5.33. So one steel pan costs what 30 of these cost.

If you bake once, for an event, there is no argument — and the saving is not really the money. It is bullet three: “simply dispose of them after eating”. Fifty individual tarts and nothing comes home to be washed.

If you bake every week, the arithmetic inverts inside a year.

But nothing else on this shelf makes an individual tart. The steel here is 9 × 5 loaf (three times), 8 × 4 loaf, 13 × 9 roast, 8 × 8 square, 12-cup muffin, 9 inch round cake — and the nearest equivalent, the KitchenAid 12-cup muffin pan at $21.99, has cups far smaller than 4.5 inches.

And the third use is one no steel pan can do: “Freeze & Reheat”, in the product name, and “picnics, BBQ’s, camping trips and travel” in bullet three. A tin you can give away with the food still in it.

Aluminum bakes differently from steel, and nobody here says so

“100% aluminum foil” is a material claim with a baking consequence.

Aluminum conducts heat about three times better than steel and this tin is two grams thin, so it reaches oven temperature almost immediately and holds almost no heat of its own. The filling drives the bake, not the pan.

Two practical effects. The base browns fast, because there is nothing between the oven floor’s radiant heat and the pastry — which is good for a tart shell and the reason commercial bakeries use foil. And it cools as fast as it heats, so a tart taken out of the oven in one of these stops cooking at once, where a 268 gram steel pan keeps going for several minutes.

The reverse is the limit: no thermal mass means no buffering. On a hot oven floor or under a grill element, a 2.2 gram tin gives the pastry no protection at all.

Neither Waytiffer listing mentions any of this, and the only thermal claim on either is on the loaf pan: “The aluminum trays have a high thermal conductivity which allows them to handle extremely high temperatures for oven use”, plus “they also optimize airflow during cooking”. Which is the right idea on the wrong listing — and even there, no temperature is given.

Recyclable, and that claim is actually sound

“Use aluminum foil material which can be recycled to solve… pollution problems such as the difficult melted disposable plastic”

Aluminum is one of the few single-use materials where this holds up. It is recycled indefinitely without losing properties, and reprocessing it takes a small fraction of the energy of making it from ore — which is why scrap aluminum has a real resale value and scrap plastic largely does not.

The condition the bullet omits is that it has to be clean. Foil with baked-on pastry and fat is contaminated, and many kerbside schemes reject it on that basis. Scrape and rinse it, or it goes in the bin like anything else.

The packaging claim is the smaller one and it is fair: “Stronger than ordinary plastic packaging”, a thick box rather than a bag. Fifty tins weighing 109 grams in total need a box or they arrive as one crushed stack.

What is not published

No foil gauge or thickness, as above, behind a heavy-duty claim.

No depth. The bullet gives two diameters and no height; the catalog says 50 mm.

No oven temperature limit. Only two items on this shelf publish one — the Amazon Basics set at 428 °F and the Elbee set at 420 °F — and neither Waytiffer listing does, although the loaf pan goes as far as “extremely high temperatures” without a figure.

No capacity, where the sister listing publishes “2Lb” for its loaf pan. A 4.5 inch tapered tin holds a specific volume and it is not given.

No statement on whether they can be reused. They are sold as disposable and foil will take a second bake, and the page does not say.

No warranty and no country of manufacture, which no item on this shelf publishes.

Availability

Read on the day this page was built: $9 at the American Amazon shop.

Read from Keepa on the day this page was last revised; stock and price both move without notice.