Ombre Jake (Jar Cake)

A few weeks ago was my birthday and I always love throwing a party not for the gifts, but to make favours for those attending! Here is how I made these favours!

Materials:

• 250ml Canning jars (can be found at Canadian tire for those in Canada approx. 6-7 dollars) they come a dozen per pack.
•  2-3 baking pans (to make the process faster)
• One box of cake mix will do 12 jars (I made 36 jars so I bought 4 boxes just in case but only used 3 boxes) *the cake mix i used was Betty Crocker Super Moist French Vanilla - $1 at Walmart*

Preparations: 

1. Sterilize the jars before using them.
2. pre-heat oven to the temperature the box indicates.

Assembly:
Cake:
So to make the ombre/gradient effect my friend and I made up the 3 batches of cake mix for each layer in 3 separate bowls all at the same time so that we could make 3 different shades of pink (pink is my thing)

NOTE:
once baked the colour changes about 3-5 shades lighter so if you're going for a light pink go a bit darker than what you would like.

Once the layers were baked in the cake pans and cooled, we took a fork and crumbled the cake so that the layers would be light and fluffy (and also its much easier to place each layer into the jar.)

We also thought of using a circular cookie cutter but never tried it I'm sure it just works fine. We just wanted to control the thickness of each layer without having to cut the cake.

Take a spoon large enough to fit in the jar and use it to spoon the fluffy cake into the jars.

Icing:
For the icing we used a butter cream recipe.
And again we separated the icing into 3 different bowls and made 2 shades of pink and left the top white. We then piped the icing into the jars (it takes 2 people to do this but it goes much faster once u have the rhythm.   
For the info on that just let me know and i will type that out.

TIPS:
The layers between cake doesn't have to be icing.
Try:

• jam
• peanut butter
• nutella
• pudding
• whipped cream
• cream cheese
• whipped marshmallows
• fruit

This is the inspiration for my cake.

I love the layers!

Then I thought the jars would be cool to showcase the layers!

For links to my inspiration pictures see my pintrest account.

Personally I think cakes in a jar are great for parties because its cake! (of course) It also doubles as a favour. My party was at an all you can eat sushi restaurant so I knew that most of the quests would be so full that if I had made a full cake there would be so much left over. With jar cakes, the guests are able to take them home and eat them when they were ready...or even take a few bites and save it for later.

This now has me looking at canning jars differently...I'm now using them for my lunches!

Had I known I was going to blog about this I would have taken decent pictures and showed what it looked like all packaged up and in the making of them. Maybe later if this post is unclear...I'll make more just so I can show the step by step.

Happy Baking! <3

Man do I want cake now!