Valentine Apple Ladybugs / I'm Not Perfect *sigh*

These are the Apple Ladybugs that I made for my little guys Valentine's Day school party last year. They are pretty simple to assemble, but again, just time consuming. I'm still on the hunt for this years inspiration for party goodness. I'm thinking about doing a heart shaped fruit pizza with all the fruit in the shape of hearts and some coconut for the 'cheese'. I get so excited to do these party snacks for the kids. I have this imaginary hope that I can get all kids around the world to eat fruit, yeah right huh? Ah well, in my dreams at least.

Things you will need:
Apples- I used red delicious. You will need 1 apple for 2 ladybugs.
Chocolate chips
Chocolate icing
A bowl of salt water- This keeps the apples from turning brown. Soak them as you cut them. I fill the kitchen sink up with water and put ~4tbls of salt. Your apples will not taste salty. *Reminder: Don't forget to sanitize the sink before you put all your apples in there.

Cut your apples like this:

3 cuts makes 2 ladybugs, 2 'bodies' & 2 'wings'

Take one 'body' and one 'wing'. Slice into two 'wings'.

Like this!

Remove core with a melon baller. Don't go too deep, you don't want to go through the 'body' layer of your ladybug.

Once soaked in salt water, dry and assemble

Once you have all your apples sliced and soaked in salt water, remove them from water and use a paper towel to dry them off. Place a small amount of icing on the bottom of each one of your 'wings'. Attache to body on a slight angel.

Once you have all your wings attached, place your icing in a ziplock bag and cut the very tip of bag so the icing can be dispensed. See a step by step guide to making your own piping bag at my other post here. Now get your chocolate chips ready and place a small dollop of icing where you want the 'spots' to go and place a chocolate chip on top. Use your icing bag to make little 'antennas' at the base of the head. I just made a hook shape on each side. Once they are complete, place them on some parchment paper and put in the fridge to 'set' the icing. That's it. These ladybugs are ready to party!



Although I would like to pretend that all these treats go off without a hitch, my efforts are not always successful. I once made a batch of Rice Krispie Apples that ended up looking more like pumpkins. I was devastated! Seems silly right? I thought, 'How embarrassing, the kids (& the teachers) won't know what they are, it's a complete failure'.

Why are us mom's so hard on ourselves? These kids aren't going to care what colour my apples turned out, but at the time, I was apologizing to the teacher of my mistake and feeling awful about them. Really, the only person I let down was myself. If I don't expect absolute perfection from others, why do I from myself?

So, with that said, I am NOT going to apologize that the 'apples' are not red. I AM going to try and let the mistake go, as the perfection I try to attain can not be achieved realistically, right?? I am also NOT going to apologize for such trivial things occupying my mind and I am NOT going to say it's not really my fault and blame it on being a Virgo (this only applies for this specific post alone *wink*) I guess I can only be perfect in my dreams...maybe. ;)




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