Teacher Appreciation Cupcakes

It's Teacher Appreciation Week at my son's school. Darn Internet and the dissemination of American culture. Now I have to go bake stupid cupcakes for a hitherto unknown celebration. Seriously though, teachers these days get such a bad rap that it is a sweet idea to show my children's teachers some love for the great job that they are doing.

Again thank you Martha's people for sucking me into the "it's a good thing," hype. Yes there were a million easier ways to decorate these but this method gave me a way to use up some Marzipan I had bought on a whim a month ago.

Making the apples was fun and reminded me of playing with modeling clay. I made them the day before. Well actually after showing her how to do them I drafted my daughter to make them for me - delegate, delegate, delegate, I always say. They look more like cherries or maybe tomatoes but I'm not complainin'. The teachers loved 'em.

The cupcake recipe I got from the book Hello Cupcake. They were completely flat and didn't rise at all. Maybe that was deliberate in order to pile on all the decorations....they were however lovely and moist and very tasty. I love that all the cupcakes in this book are decorated using nothing more than a ziplock bag, a technique that I also employed when decorating my son's birthday cake. I frosted these using Martha's Swiss Meringue Butter Cream which was light and very yummy.If I had stopped to think about it I should have realized that this frosting was going to be a very, very pale yellow and not white as shown in the pictures ( artistic license heh heh.) If I make these again I must remember to use a cream cheese frosting.