Fall Apple Cupcakes

Celebrate fall with these cute little apple cupcakes! Filled with a chocolate chip “seed” core, these are sure to make everyone smile!

Well. Fall is here. I just began to notice the changing leaves this week, and of course every morning it’s a little bit darker on my drive to work.

Every fall, our family makes a special trip to a local orchard to sample apples, doughnuts and cider. As the temperatures drop I find myself looking forward to pumpkins and rustling leaves and all the fun flavors that come with this new season! These little cupcakes don’t taste like apples, but they sure do look like them!  I even added a fun seeded core to these, using my trusty cake pop maker.

How fun is that? Surprise chocolate chips are always a plus in my book! You can skip the “core” if you want- just make solid-colored cupcakes instead of using my added steps in the recipe. Either way, these are a lot of fun and easy to make!

Here’s the recipe: (printable recipe)

INGREDIENTS:

• 1 boxed white cake mix (plus oil, water and eggs to make according to package)
• Food coloring gels in desired colors.
• 1/2 cup of mini chocolate chips (if making core)
• 2 sticks (1 cup) salted butter, softened
• 2 sticks (1 cups) unsalted butter, softened
• 3 cups powdered sugar
• 2 tablespoons of vanilla
• Colored sugar sprinkles (in desired colors)
• Fondant for stems and leaves (or use pretzel sticks for the stems and spearmint gummy leaves instead!)

DIRECTIONS:

• Make cake mix according to package
• Remove one cup of batter and place in a separate bowl.
• Mix in mini chocolate chips.
• Bake in cakepop maker (or use a small mini-muffin tin), making 24 cake pops (or mini-muffins)
• Divide remaining batter into separate bowls and color using color gels. I did green, red and yellow apples, but you can do just one of those colors if you want.
• Place cupcake liners into tins and spoon just a small amount of batter into each liner.
• Use a cake pop to spread batter evenly into bottom of liner and then leave the cake pop in the center.
• Spoon remaining batter evenly over the cake pops, covering each pop completely.

• Bake at 350F degrees for 15-18 minutes.
• Cool completely.
• Make frosting by placing butters, powdered sugar and vanilla in a large mixing bowl and beating on high for 3-4 minutes until very light and fluffy.
• Use a medium cookie scoop to scoop frosting on each cupcake, and then turn cupcake upside down into a bowl of decorating sugar, pressing until all of frosting is covered in sugar.
• Decorate with fondant leaves and stems, or use pretzels and spearmint leaves.
• To use fondant, you can buy it already made in white and color it with gel in green and brown, or you can make it from scratch and color it the same way. 
• Use a leaf fondant cutter to make leaves and just roll and cut the stems.
• If you are new to fondant, we did a tutorial on it here.  It is MUCH easier than it seems like it would be, and you can make such cute decorations with it!

My thoughts: These are such a happy fall treat! You can go all- out and make little chocolate chip cores, or just make plain cupcakes in various colors.  Either way, they are a yummy, easy, fall treat that look beautiful on a fall-themed table.  Hope you get a chance to try these!  Enjoy!! ~Ruthanne

Other fun fall recipes here on easybaked: