Cake in a Jar

Now for a great Holiday idea!   I have a friend who is a wonderful illustrator and for christmas you may be lucky to receive a one of a kind sketch from him.  With that for inspiration, why not give the gift of baking?  Now you can give a big box of homemade cookies or dare I say…a fruit cake?  Or you can allow your gift recipients to bake it out for themselves…Heres what I mean.  

The red velvet recipe from the previous post fits perfectly into a jar of 4 cups.

Cake in a Jar!  I once gave a friend green tea cake in a jar as a gift which she then had to bring through security at the airport.  She got through with many compliments on what a great idea it was.  There are plenty of websites and stores that sell these premade, but if you’re anything like me, your wallet is somewhat empty as is your fridge, except for that huge pantry full of baking supplies from granulated sugar to gumpaste.  So heres how you do it:

1. Find a jar.  Either go through your recycling or you can go to Michael’s like I did…well I also work there, and grabbed one of these fancy plush holiday jars.

2. Fill with all the dry ingredients of a cake or cookie recipe, like the Scarlet Velveteen recipe below. Make sure to layer your ingredients to give some texture and achieve a striped effect.  Its best to choose a recipe that has diverse colors.  Cookie recipes are great as you get beautiful colors and textures between the brown sugar, walnuts, flour and chocolate chips.

3. Make sure to include directions to make you jarred confection, so that your gift recepient know what and how much to add of the wet ingredients.

Colorize your sugar

** For an extra cool striped effect for your Scarlet Velvet cake in a jar,  dye the sugar red.  Have you been spending your hard earned cash on fancy colored sugars? Not just the holiday blue, green, and red, but that fancy pink and neon green?  Use this trick not only to make your gift super cool, but to avoid spending cash on something you can do on your own.  To achieve colored sugar simply add a few drops of food coloring to granulated sugar in a plastic bag and shake it up.  Adding 2 TB to the 1 1/2 cups called for in the previous red velvet recipe is a little much so I recommend spreading the the sugar out on a cookie sheet to dry for a few hours.

WAIT THERES MORE!!!  IT’S TIME FOR MY FIRST GIVE AWAY!!!!  ‘Tis the season! So go ahead and comment on either this Cake in a jar post or the Scarlet velveteen and you just may receive (winners will be picked out of my santa hat) one of these great plush jars to make (and gift) your very on CAKE IN A JAR!!

7 comments December 17, 2009