How to Woo A Teacher

Last week was Elizabeth's sweet teacher, Mrs. Cobb's, birthday.

As the room mom, it was my role to coordinate everything for the party. I decided to enlist help from the other parents for drinks and snacks, but I wanted to do the cupcakes.

I do LOVE to bake.

I thought for a moment about what I wanted to do and remembered seeing cupcakes that looked like apples in my sister-in-law's cupcake book, "What's New, Cupcake?".

Bam. I knew what I had to do.

What would be better than apple cupcakes for a teacher's birthday?

So, I borrowed the book, and went to work.

I will admit that these cupcakes were tedious, and they honestly did not taste that great, but they sure were cute. The truth is that these cupcakes are more about presentation than taste. They were still good...just not as tasty as I like for my cupcakes to be.

With that said, if you want to woo your child's teacher, here's one way to make cupcakes that look like apples. Again, I got this from "What's New, Cupcake?", which is a fantastic book with all sorts of ideas for decorating cupcakes. If cupcake decorating is your thing, you should definitely get a copy of this book.

Ingredients for Apple Cupcakes:

Yellow cupcakes baked in red paper liners

2 Cans of Vanilla Frosting

Red Food Coloring (I used Wilton Red - No Taste from WalMart)

Red Sprinkles

Chocolate-covered mini doughnuts

Tootsie Rolls

Green Tootsie Rolls (or other green fruit chews)

First, you'll want to dye your frosting. I suggest using a few teaspoons of the gel dye for two cans of vanilla frosting, possibly more, depending on how deep of a red you want. It's a good idea to let the frosting sit overnight to let the dye achieve it's deepest red. You can see that mine wasn't super red, but it winds up getting covered with sprinkles, so it's okay if the frosting is not red red.

When you're ready to start frosting the cupcakes, spread a little frosting on each cupcake to form a base. Cut the mini doughnuts in half. Discard (or eat) the bottom halves. Place one half on each cupcake. Put cupcakes in the freezer for about 10 minutes.

Pull the cupcakes out of the freezer one by one, or two at a time. Spread the frosting on top of the doughnuts and down the sides, forming the shape of an apple as you go. Use a small spatula to spread the frosting for a nice smooth texture.

Pour the red sprinkles in a shallow dish. Roll each cupcake in the sprinkles, covering every surface of frosting.

To make the stems of the apples, I cut each Tootsie Roll in half first. Then I kind of rolled it up with my fingers until I got the shape of something that resembled a stem. You can also use a mini rolling pin to roll them out.

The leaves were my least favorite part. Seriously. I probably screamed at least once. Hopefully you'll do better than me. Use a mini rolling pin, or other firm round object, to roll the green fruit chews to a 1/8 inch thickness. Then use a knife to cut leaf shapes out of the candy. Make a line down one side of the leaf with the back of the knife and then crimp one end of the leaf to give it shape. If that doesn't make sense, refer to the pictures. My leaves were by no means perfect, but I tried.

Put one stem and one or two leaves on each cupcake. Ta-Daa!

If you're storing these overnight, put them in the fridge. I didn't, and I woke up to melted leaves. Oops.

You will put them in the fridge, though, so they will be beautiful. Put them in a cupcake taker, and take them to your kid's teacher for her birthday...or for a class party. If you're really crafty, put them in a basket like they did in the book, which is pictured at the top of this post.

Voila! You wooed the teacher.

If you try these, leave a comment, and let me know how it goes!

*A note on the supplies: I bought the red cupcakes liners, red sprinkles, Tootsie Rolls, and green fruit chews at Party City. The doughnuts were from QT. I'm sure you know where to find a cupcake mix and some vanilla frosting. As I said above, the red food coloring was from WalMart. You do not want to use liquid food coloring from the grocery store for this project. It simply will not get the frosting red enough. You need gel food coloring. I use Wilton brand, but there are others. Look in the baking supply section at WalMart, Michael's, or Hobby Lobby. Red dye tends to have a bitter taste, so either buy the no taste variety, or plan to add vanilla for extra flavoring.