Since I wanted the basic colors to be red & green & the Very Hungry Caterpillar ate an apple, I decided I wanted apples to be the centerpiece of the table. As you can tell from my other posts, between the ice cream cone cupcakes, cherry pie cupcakes & green & red cupcakes...there were a lot of cupcakes to go around. However, there were the cutest apple cupcakes in my "What's New Cupcake?" cookbook that I just had to make. Since there were so many cupcakes, I didn't serve cake too, but I did make a cake for Addy to eat either at her party or either the next day on her actual birthday. Even though this was her 2nd birthday, I thought a smash cake sized cake would be best for her & it turned out to be a perfect size for the 3 of us to eat when we finally did eat it the next day on her birthday. I decided to use an approach similar to the approach I used with Addy's owl cake that I made for her first birthday.
So first up, how to make the apple cupcakes. I baked red velvet cupcakes in red cupcake liners & then iced them with cream cheese icing tinted bright red. I then dipped the iced cupcakes into red crystallized sugar, as you can see below.
Then I finished the decorations. I took tootsie rolls & I cut them in half & then in half lengthwise too, making 4 separate pieces. I stuck each piece into the top of a cupcake like an apple stem. Then I took a green airhead & cut small triangular pieces from it to resemble a leaf. I then stuck the green pieces on top of the cupcake, by the "stem", to look like leaves. Here are some pics of them before they were set out on the table.
I had found the cutest white basket liners from Michaels to go a.round the outside of these cupcakes. Here is what the apple cupcakes looked like on the table. I didn't add the white basket liners to the cupcakes on top so that you could see the cake better & because there wasn't as much room. I really think the apple cupcakes turned out pretty cute & really were not difficult to make at all. Now onto the apple cake.
I used the same glass bowl that I used to make Addy's owl cake. I took a box of strawberry cake mix & mixed all of the ingredients together. I poured half of the mix into the bowl & baked it & then poured the other half of the mix into the bowl & baked it as well. I may invest in another bowl this same size (I think it's quart size) so that I can just bake both halves at the same time, but for now, I just have to remember to start baking early so I can get both halves complete. For the owl cake, I made one of the halves larger & the other half smaller to make the shape of the owl. For this apple cake, I wanted the halves to be even so that the cake would be more rounded & resemble an apple more. After I had the two baked halves, I shaved down the top parts to make sure they were flat & then put icing in between the two flat halves to make the shape of an apple. After the cake was assembled, I iced the entire thing with cream cheese icing tinted bright red. I then covered the cake with red crystallized sugar. I hope by the next time I bake a cake, I come up with a better way to apply the crystallized sugar because it was not quite as easy as the cupcakes. With the cupcakes, you can just dip them in the sugar. Not so easy with the cake. So I poured it on where I could & then sort of just threw the sugar at the other parts of the cake until it was covered. It wasn't the best method to conserve the extra red sugar, but it worked & I really didn't have a better plan. : ) I finished off the cake decorations the same way as the cupcakes, with tootise rolls & a piece of green Airhead. I used an entire tootsie roll for the stem & then a larger piece of green airhead for the big apple's leaf.
Anyway, here is what the cupcakes & cake looked like on the table. Even better, it was all very delicious, but let's be serious, with boxed cake mix, icing & then added sugar too...it pretty much had to be. : )
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