How about an apple for your favorite teacher to celebrate Teacher Appreciation Day and/or Teacher Appreciation Week?
A cupcake apple to be specific! Heck, it doesn’t need to be an official teacher appreciation day or week – teachers work so hard and do one of the most important jobs that anyone could ever do. They need to be appreciated each and every day. I can’t take credit for this cute cupcake idea, I’ve seen them all over Pinterest and wanted to make a batch for my daughter to take to school, so I figured I’d share them with you, in case you had a special teacher (or teachers or entire school) that you want to share them with.
These sweet treats are SUPER easy to make and I have some free Teacher Appreciation printables for you to use with them.
Start off by making a batch of cupcakes – I used a yellow cake mix from Duncan Hines. If you have red cupcake liners, they would be perfect. I did not have any, and that’s how the free printable cupcake wrappers came to be. Bake your cupcakes according to the directions on your package. Once your cupcakes are cool, it’s time to frost. You can use homemade frosting or canned – your choice. You could easily color your frosting red and skip the sprinkles – it’s completely up to you – either way would be cute. Heck, you could color the frosting red and cover with red sprinkles. They are cupcakes – no rules here!
After frosting each cupcake I immediately covered them in red sanding sugar. Don’t wait around, your frosting will start to set and your sprinkles won’t stick. I used a big tub of sanding sugar sprinkles and poured them right on the cupcakes, with a bowl below to catch the extra sprinkles. If you want to see how I do this, check out my video in this post where I am covering pretzels with sprinkles. I literally dump my sprinkles on.
For the stems and leaves I used pretzel sticks and green chocolate melting discs that I cut in half. If you don’t have access to green melting discs, you could use a variety of candies. Some that come to mind are green gumdrops, jelly beans, M&M’s, fruit roll ups or even gummy worms. If it’s green, it’ll work. 
After covering your cupcake in frosting and sprinkles (or just red frosting if you prefer), add your leaves and stems. Next comes packaging. These are optional steps really – it’s up to you how much you want to do. If you are making these for every teacher in the entire district, you may want to skip the printables and call it good. But if you want to do something a bit more, here is what I am doing…
Print off your cupcake wrappers. The papers I used for these cupcake wrappers are from Mel Stampz. She has the most AMAZING digital papers I have seen, and shares them for free, which makes her like the coolest person ever.
I just taped mine closed. I’m sure there are fancier and prettier ways to do it, but this was quick and easy – both of which I’m a fan of.
I then placed the wrappers in my clear plastic cups (so the wrappers are pretty much for decoration and are not serving a functional purpose) and then added my cupcakes to the cups.
I like to package cupcakes in cups if I am taking individual cupcakes somewhere. It holds them still and allows them to reach their destination. The cups fit nicely in the cellophane bags you can pick up at craft stores (sometimes even Target and Walmart). Add a gift tag and some ribbon and voila – a sweet little teacher treat. That’s it! These really are easy peasy treat to whip up.
I often get asked how to get the cupcakes out of the cups without getting any frosting on you. Um, carefully? I usually quickly pop them out on to a napkin and then flip them over. The frosting is usually set enough that it’s not that messy, especially if it’s covered in sprinkles. And if one gets frosting on their fingers, I see this as a good excuse to eat frosting. I hate going through the trouble of making cupcakes only to have them jostle around on the car ride and look like crud upon arrival. So yes, they may be a tad messy to get out of the cup, but it’s the sacrifice I’m okay making in order to keep their cute little looks preserved.
So sweet. I did these while my daughter was at school, but having the kids add the leaves and stems would be a great way to let them help out. They get to turn the cupcakes into apples!
I’ve made a few different printable cupcake wrappers for you. One is plain and the other two have teacher specific text on them. I’ve created some in both red and green – so you can pick your favorite apple color to use.
All of the free printables are available on the printables page.
Enjoy and share some with a teacher! Also make sure to check out the super cute free digital papers over at Mel Stampz.
Oh my days, these are so incredibly awesome! I feel a little left out since we don’t have such an appreciation day over this side of the pond. But normally at the end of term, we buy gifts as a huge thank you to the teachers and these would be perfect. Thanks for sharing.
Oh my! These are seriously the cutest. I love this idea!
As a teacher myself, let me tell you how wonderfully sweet it would be to receive one of these cupcakes! I teach high school, so these sorts of random treats are quite the anomaly . . . However, if one of my students were to bring me an apple cupcake of appreciation, it would make my week!
This has to be one of the cutest things I have ever seen. What a great idea! I love reading your blog
These are so adorable. I’m signed up to take a dessert next week for Teacher Week and these might just work.
These are so adorable!!
Ah, thank you ladies!
Laura, my brother and his wife both teach at the high school level, and I know that these things are far and few between at that level. We need to change that! My brother keeps hoping that someone will bring him an actual apple – he said that would be the coolest thing ever.
I’d go with the cupcake version myself.
These are so cute!!! I totally use the plastic cup and cellophane for wrapping, it works like a charm.
Perfect!! I just got a note home today from the school saying that next Friday was “Bring Your Teacher an Apple” Day! I can’t wait to try these. Thanks so much!
Amazing idea, i needed something to do for my fantastic teacher after exams as shes put loads of hardwork into us. She would absaloutely love them!!!!!! Thanks xx
These are adorable! A Pastry Chefs View From Inside A Bakery
Just fabulous Christi!
this is such a great design, i know what to send into school on my sons last day, really original idea !
These are so great! I just made 2 dozen for my son’s school and they are absolutely going to love them. It was one of the quickest decorating I’ve done in a long time. Thank you so much for the idea.
This is teacher appreciation week here for my kids and wouldn’t you know I’m making cupcakes today! This is a fantastic idea!!!!! I may have to borrow it!
I made these last night to give to our teachers today. They are precious. I just wanted to let you guys know to put the cupcakes in the wrappers as close to delivery time as possible. I bagged them up last night, just as they are in the post, and they were precious. This morning, the red from the cupcakes seems to have bled all over the papers and some of them are a mess!
Kind of a bummer.
You could double your cupcake liners – add a second liner or wrapper – it doesn’t hold onto the cupcake the way the one it’s cooked in does, but it gives a nice clean look. I sometimes do this if I’m using a dark cake mix or one that might be a bit oily and soak through the wrapper. Hope that helps!
Thanks. I realized after I commented that I should have clarified. The red from the sprinkles bled all over the cute extra paper liners that lined the cups. I guess the moisture from the frosting and the red sugar just had a party!
Well the whole frosting + sprinkles = BFF thing.
I’ve found that there can be a lot of variation with sprinkles, from brand, to color to just the batch. I haven’t had any do that in a while, but I have definitely experienced it before. I have a feeling they were probably still super cute, I know I’m really critical of my baked goods and then the recipients are like “YAY SUGAR!” and don’t notice the things that I was super focused on.
Exactly. They were still really cute. The most damage was done to the cupcakes that I’d used the green wrappers with. I was able to send in the red wrapped cupcakes with my girls, for their classroom teachers, and then I just switched out the papers and took the rest over later!
They probably NEVER noticed though. It’s a “me” issue!
Christine, glad it worked out. Good for you for switching them out and taking them over – depending on the day I might have found that just cause to just consume them and leave no trace of evidence!
I bet the girls had fun taking them in.
Oh my goodness these are awesome! I would love for you to link them up to my Teacher Appreciation Linky Party.
http://www.itsybitsypaperblog.com/2012/05/teacher-appreciation-linky-party.html
My middle school daughters just made these for their teachers today. They turned out so cute!