My children loved making these cupcakes for their teachers when they were younger.  Since they are both grown into young adults and are finished their schooling we haven’t made these vanilla cupcakes that look like apples in a few years.

What a great way to say thank you to a teacher. We love and appreciate teachers in this house.  No teachers to make them for, well how about a friend or family member, or just for the fun of making them with your children and of course to eat..  How bout them apples?
Our dear friends from Maine came for a visit a couple of weeks ago along with their three children.  Emily is already an avid baker at the age of fourteen and spends many hours a week in the kitchen.  Sweet Megan who is nine loves being in the kitchen, learning and baking with her big sister.  So when I asked them what type of baking they wanted to do for a blog post they said cupcakes!!!  What a treat it was to have them help me with this post for The Handy Homemaker blog.  This recipe is very easy and is something the entire family can do together.  All I did was give the recipes and the directions and these two did it all!  They did an amazing job and they worked well together in the kitchen.

Thank you Emily and Megan!! I had so much fun with you both.  You also make beautiful models for this post 🙂

Ingredients required:

• Vanilla cake/cupcake recipe or Vanilla cake mix
• 1/2 batch Vanilla Buttercream Icing recipe
• Red food colour
• Green food colour
• Optional* Brown food colour
• Red Sanding Sugar (Click for my easy DIY recipe)
• Red cupcake liners
• Cupcake tins
• Piping bags and leaf tip(67 or 69) and large round (12) or star tips(1M)
• pretzel sticks (if you make 24 cupcakes you will need 24 sticks)
• Bakers chocolate or chocolate chips (1/2 cup) melted over double boiler
• parchment paper lined baking sheet

Pipe on a small amount of icing and then gently set the cupcake in the sanding sugar and roll in a circular motion to round out and cover the icing with sugar

Poke the pre-made chocolate covered pretzel into the cupcake and pipe a leaf on the side of the stem.  Brown icing and a small number 3 round tip and pipe and stem in place of using pretzels. The cupcakes are all ready to be eaten, and/or boxed up for the teacher 🙂Here is Emmy working away.  Laptop open to my Vanilla cupcake recipe which makes exactly 24 medium-sized cupcakes.  She mixed the batter perfectly and then used an ice cream scoop into the cupcake liners that Megan had ready for her.   Megan has already gotten to work,  the cupcake tins are filled with red liners, preheat the oven  set at 320°, and she did a fabulous job making the red sanding sugar.  It’s time to melt the chocolate.  We used semi sweet baking chocolate, placed in a glass bowl over 2 inches of simmering water.  Kept on the heat until the chocolate is 2/3 melted and then we removed from the heat and stirred until the remaining chocolate was melted.  Be sure to dry the bottom of the glass off to make sure you do not get water in the bowl of chocolate.  This could cause the chocolate to seize up. Emmy placed the cupcakes in the oven set to 320° for 19-22 minutes.  She starts making the Buttercream icing.  Once the icing is whipped she places about 3/4 cup of icing into a small bowl.  Megan takes over and adds a few drops of green food color and mixes the color in by hand.  Since we are only using two colours Emily adds the red colouring directly into the mixing bowl and whips until the desired colour of red is reached.  If you are using brown icing you will need to set aside another 3/4 cup of icing in a small bowl and mix with brown food colour.
When the oven timer rings, remove the cupcakes and place on a rack to cool.  Now that the chocolate is completely melted Megan dips the pretzel sticks into the chocolate and sets them to dry on a baking sheet lined with parchment paper.  Once you make enough for the cupcakes place in the refrigerator until set.
Look at these smiles. Emmy is demonstrating her piping skills.  As you see, Emmy’s piping skills are spot on but don’t worry it doesn’t really matter how you pipe the icing on.  Don’t worry if you are not as practiced as Emily is.  You could use a knife to smooth it on if you prefer.  It will round and smooth out once placed in the sugar anyway.  This is a no stress frosting application 😉 Here is Emmy demonstrating how easy it is to coat the cupcake icing in the sanding sugar.  Just a slight swirling and rolling motion and your done.
Easy breezy.. Now it’s time for the chocolate covered pretzel stems.  Just poke the pretzel into the cupcake, chocolate dipped end up.  I have a feeling Megan licked her fingers during this process 😉Megan giving the icing one last stir before we filled the piping bags.  We placed a sheet of waxed paper so she could practice making buttercream leaves, before piping them on the cupcakes.  She was a pro at these leaves! Here both of the girls in action piping the leaves on the cupcakes.  We can’t wait to eat one! I caught Emmy enjoying the red icing 😉
The last few to do then we are done.
We placed them in a basket to serve along side of the fresh fruit we purchased at the market that day.  I think in this case everyone wants an apple.

We had so much fun in the kitchen together.  Thank you Emily and Megan.  I can’t wait until our next time in the kitchen together.
Cupcakes for teachers!! We love teachers!!