Teacher Appreciation Cupcakes - Apple Cupcake Toppers

Our little group of school mums decided to club together for gifts for Jenny's reception teachers and classroom assistants. Yay, no crazy gift shopping! 

But then I saw this tutorial from Victorious Cupcakes on www.Goodtoknow.co.uk recipes for teacher thank you cupcakes. 

Feeling Inspired, I decided to make our teachers some pretty vanilla cupcakes with apple toppers to share between them as a little personal thank you. Who Is Feeling Brave?!

So I dashed off to Pipedreams which is my nearest proper cake decorating store and bought two lovely silver boxes which carry 12 cupcakes each.   I tried to find a "thank you" stamp or something with small enough letters for a cupcake topper but there was nothing suitable unfortunately. 

Creating the Apple Toppers:

**This part needs to be done about 24 hours in advance to allow the fondant to dry**

Spending a fun afternoon together Clever Daughter and I had made the fondant elements of the apple. Admittedly I was really responsible for rolling fondant and advising, and she did all the hard stuff because I figured the teachers would appreciate it more from her little fingers.

She's not called Clever Daughter for nothing.



We used:

9" 23cm Rolling Pin - Non Stick Polyethylene












Ready-coloured fondant in Green and Red and a little Black. I used Dr.Oetker Regalice Ready to Roll Icing Colours 500g

10 Sets (30 Pcs) Plunger Cutters Sugarcraft Cake Decorating

Tala Pastry Cutters Set 6 Plastic

I used the cutter which was slightly smaller than the dimensions of the top of the cupcake.











Cornflour/Cornstarch to stop the fondant sticking to your rolling surface.

A small palette knife or non-serrated knife for cutting, and additionally to transport elements of the apple from the rolling area to the drying area.


Step 1: Leaves

• Roll out your green fondant on a nice sprinkling of cornflour.  It does not have to be wispy thin, just a sensible strong width for a little leaf. I would guess at about 2mm thick.
• Using your smallest rose leaf cutter push into the fondant, give it a wiggle to loosen your leaf and then press down on the plunger to impress the veins.
• Now pick it up and when over a plate or good drying surface press the plunger down again and the leaf should drop right out. 
• Leave to dry (I love an unexpected pun).

(the yellow cones visible on the plate were for our roses - this will be covered in another post)

Step 2: Apples

• Now roll out the red fondant, as with the leaf this should not be super thin or they will break  the moment you put them on the cupcake. Again, I estimate at 2mm thick.
• Using the smooth side of a round cookie or pastry cutter cut out circles of fondant. 
• If I had a small letter press I would have imprinted "Thank You" in the middle of the apple at this stage.
• Using a knife cut a small triangle out of the top and a very wide and shallow triangle from opposite side. Please do keep the remaining fondant and waiting circles covered with cling film or they will dry more quickly than you think and you will find it very difficult to smooth the edges effectively.

• Now smooth those pointy edges with your fingers as if you are making a rounded heart shape on both sides. Once the top and bottom of the apple are curved and you will see that it has achieved a recognisable apple shape.

 

• Allow to dry on a flat surface.

 

Step 3: Stalk

• For the stalk take a small quantity of brown fondant (we mixed black and red together to achieve our brown colour), roll it out into a strip and then cut it so it looks like a ribbon about 1cm wide.
• And then using your palette knife or smooth knife start cutting at about 4mm intervals and you will see our stalk.

 

• Since the apple was generally looking pretty 2 dimensional I decided not to roll the twig to make it rounder, but rather embrace it's flat shape.

 

The Cupcakes!

 



The next day I baked 24 cupcakes using the Hummingbird vanilla cupcake recipe. I had recently read an article about how you shouldn't make batches of cake batter in double or half portions as it can be the chemistry of the ingredients in the original quantities which makes the cake work. So I faithfully made the first batch and while baking them I mixed up the second. I must say I did feel a bit silly, but I have to place my trust in the professionals.

Unfortunately I overcooked the first batch a bit. I got The Fear that they weren't really done and gave them another 3 minutes. Too much!  Not burnt, just a bit dry (I know because I ate one - shhh!).  The second batch was allowed no such sympathy. Spot on time, perfect bounce, clean skewer, very happy.

While they cooled I whipped up a batch of Loryn's - should be patented - buttercream icing mix which looks a bit like this:

• 250g unsalted butter at room temperature
• 1kg icing sugar
• big dollop of cream cheese (I use Philadelphia original)
• about 1-2 tablespoons water added with caution to loosen it a bit.
• I also add a good splash of vanilla extract, well, because I love vanilla.

Keep a small quantity of butter cream aside (about 2 tablespoons at most) for attaching the leaves.

Preparing the Cupcakes:

We used:

1M icing nozzle
Jem 1M & 2D Stainless Steel Tips

Disposable piping bags
1 Roll of Savoy Disposable Piping Bags - 100 12" Bags












To pipe a rose
You need to always swirl from the centre outward, nozzle pointing 90 degrees to the cake surface and keeping it about 1.5cm above allowing the icing to fall onto the cupcake as you squeeze, while swirling around. When you have reached the edge of the cupcake stop squeezing and drag the bag away which breaks the icing off but may leave a messy edge, just pat it down gently with your finger for a nicer finish.


24 lovely cream coloured roses!  They were so pretty that I decided not to make all of the cupcakes have toppers (not everyone likes fondant anyway!) and just shook a pinch of red sprinkles over the top of  half of the cupcakes.

 

Time to assemble our apples!

On our freshly iced cupcake place the apple shape, and then the stalk as close as possible but not overlapping.

Now put a little of our extra buttercream on the back of one rose leaf and stick it down to cover the point where the stalk and the apple meet.

Tadaaaah!  Fantastico!

Well the teachers definitely liked them anyway!  And they made Clever Daughter feel like the smartest kid in town, fussing her for making such fabulous things.  Which sounds like it had the opposite of the intended effect as they were supposed to make the TEACHERS feel special, but when you think about why they're fussing her it's sort of the same thing.

I am Tracey, and we make teacher-worthy cupcakes.

Disclaimer: The items linked to are what I have bought in the stores I bought them from but these are subject to change by the stores and you may find better value at a different store, listing, manufacturer or quantity.

The unloveable beginnings

I think the only place for me to start is at the beginning.

I have was never a good baker, I only separated an egg and a yolk for the first time a few months ago.

• My great grandfather was an amazing pastry chef in a prestigious London hotel by all accounts
• His daughter (my grandmother) made excellent Scottish shortbread, and I remember a short season of lovely jam tarts too
• Her daughter (my mother) preferred to buy our cakes from the local supermarket (although she could make a mean doorstop of a chocolatey biscuit thing on special school occasions). 

So as you can see the baking talent gene had slowly but surely been thinned out, and by the time it reached me it was slightly above zero.  When I made cakes I tended to be the only one to eat them, NOT because they were so completely awful (I hope...) but because I was the only one who really seemed to like traditional cake rather than fresh cream doughnuts - which are obviously divine and tend to leave the kitchen in a neat state...

Many years passed and my own daughter was growing up and keen to help with ANYTHING that she could. So we got bought some cake mixes and some sprinkles and got to work. And we had FUN! Biscuits, cupcakes, cakes and tubs of completely gorgeous ready mixed icing sugar (I have an all-consuming love affair with the Betty Crocker baking empire).

One birthday I even got brave enough to bake my daughter's cake. A Betty Crocker Devils food cake box mix with  Betty's chocolate fudge icing. It was GORGEOUS. People said nice things about it! They came back for seconds!  I was feeling like Mum of the Year!  I thought Yes, Perhaps I Can Do This Again!

And I did. Same mix, same icing, yum yum. Again and again. Then my husband confessed that he actually liked Victoria sponge cakes better than chocolate. Interesting Concept. Not Devils Food Cake... Processing...Right. No Problem, I Will Make It Myself.

I found a recipe online which I will link to here and made the Victoria sponge myself.  My husband liked it! He ate lots of it. I ate lots of it too, but that doesn't say much. It finished. And I thought Yes. Points to Me! I Can Do It.

I was then possessed to buy a giant cupcake tin from Sainsbury's. I say possessed because I saw it, considered it, went away, thought about it, read up on it, saw it, didn't buy it, thought about it, went back and got the damn thing and hid it in the Kitchen Drawer of Doom so it could stop bothering me!

One day I found a giant cupcake recipe and Clever Daughter and I made it together. I didn't get the cooking times right though, and the outside needed some drastic trimming before anyone could eat any. Then I sliced it up horizontally with alternating layers of icing and jam and we stuck the whole thing back together.

Completely skew.

Never Mind. Chin Up, Keep Going!  So we made the buttercream pink. Really dark, strangely-orangey pink and Clever Daughter and I iced the top. Then I figured I couldn't leave the bottom exposed being all sliced up and messy and we still had buttercream left so we had better cover the whole thing. And don't forget the sprinkles!



Yes. That Worked Out Well.

It still tasted great by the way which DOES count for something.

I was so embarrassed by it. I swore to improve - well surely there is no place to go but up??

Not true. A few months later I tried to use a piping bag for the first time on some cupcakes with... unsavoury results.

Yum yum... Who wants one?  Oh, just me?  Are you sure I can't tempt you?

Boohoo.



I am Tracey, and I will improve.