Happy 4th of July!

I'm still baking something for Jesson's class every week. This past week I decided to be patriotic and make something in honor of the 4th of July. I thought I might make something and decorate it in red, white, and blue. The more I thought about it, I really wanted whatever I made to have a very American taste as well as an American look. And what is more American than Apple Pie! But these are busy students, and they don't have the time or the facilities to cut into an apple pie in the middle of class, plus I'd have to send plates, forks, etc. Nope, not gonna work.....unless.....I put it into a portable form! Some quick searching on the internet and I had my answer: Apple Pie Filled Cupcakes with Caramel Icing! Genius! Essentially, I was going to make some cupcakes, hollow them out, fill them with apple pie filling, put the lids back on, and then frost them.

I read all these complicated recipes for how to make the cupcakes themselves. In the end, I saved myself the frustration and make a yellow cake mix according to the directions on the box. Then I added one extra egg and two teaspoons of cinnamon to turn them into cinnamon cupcakes. I divided them into two muffin tins so that I got 24 cupcakes. Then baked like normal. I let them cool completely and then hollowed them out. At that point, I took two cans of apple pie filling and pulsed them in my food processor a couple times. The apple chunks were WAY too big to fit into the cupcakes and needed to be broken down into little pieces. Then I put the lids back on and frosted them with caramel frosting. Below was the result:

 The red, white, and blue under the cupcake is actually a super cute wrapper that I got from JoAnn's. Each cupcake had their own little wrapper. Then they got packed up to go to school the next day:

From what I hear, they were a hit! There were none left at the end of the day. I've never made filled cupcakes before, but these were relatively easy and have got me thinking about what other flavors I can do!