Apple Donuts Cupcakes for Teacher Appreciation - Anders Ruff Custom Designs, LLC

I love teacher appreciation week. Teachers are SUCH hard workers and do so much for our kids that I love to focus on pampering them during teacher appreciation week.

If you saw me posting the adorable photo on instagram, it jogged my memory to when we made something similar. A couple years ago for back to school we made these Apple Cupcake Donuts that area actually cupcakes. Does that count as a donut, then? Maybe its just a donut shaped cupcake. Either way….wouldn’t these be perfect for teacher’s appreciation week?

INSTRUCTIONS
I had a few options once I came up with the idea to make a donut (doughnut- how do you spell it?) that was decorated like an apple for the teachers.
1) Go to the donut store and buy some plain donuts and just decorate it like an apple
2) Use cupcake batter (in our case we used the Trader Joes vanilla baking mix, which was DELICIOUS and so easy!)
or 3) Find a great recipe for a homemade donut and make it in my donut shaped baking pan

I went for the “middle of the road” effort option, 3.

INGREDIENTS & MATERIALS
– Donut Shaped Baking Pan (Prepare with butter for grease and flour)
– Trader Joe’s Vanilla Baking Mix
– Eggs
– Butter
– Milk
– Powdered Sugar
– Red Food Coloring
– Pretzel Sticks and Green Jelly Beans or M&Ms
– Optional – Gummy Worms 😉

STEPS
STEP 1) So simple – mix up the Trader Joes baking mix, melted butter, egg and milk (I chose to use Almond milk because we love it).
STEP 2) Spoon the batter into prepared donut pans. NOTE – make sure to grease AND flour the pans otherwise the donuts seem to have a hard time coming out.
STEP 3) Bake per instructions on the mix box. We baked ours until they were a tiny bit golden so they held their shape better.
STEP 4) Mix up some red icing using powdered sugar and milk and red food coloring. I did about 1 cup of powdered sugar and 2 T. milk. You have to work with it a little to get it not too thick and not too thin. Add more powdered sugar to thicken, or milk to thin out.
STEP 5) Once the donut/faux-nut cupcakes are cooled, use a piping bag and pipe around and around with the icing starting at the center and going towards the outer edge.
STEP 6) Stick a pretzel stick in the top and 2 green candies (M and Ms, Jelly Beans or whatever you can find) for leaves.

Optional: Add a gummy worm coming out of the hole 😉 (Thanks to my sweet friend, Caryn, for adding that last minute idea!)

Done! Now go impress your teachers and have a great school year!