Cake In a Jar

Tuesday, December 08, 2015

Welcome to the Do It Yourself Gift Series!

I'm just going to throw this out there and say Pam & I are obsessed with crafting. Give us some glue (preferably glitter), scissors and paper and we are so content. For me, I love nothing more than finishing a project I've been working on and immediately sending a picture of it to Pam to show her how pleased I am with myself and how fabulous...or unfortunate (yes, this happens on a regular basis) it's turned out. For the next four days, we are going to be posting our favourite DIY gifts for you, along with super easy how-to steps so you can become just as craft obsessed as we are!

Cake in a Jar

Make sure to use a small or medium sized glass jar with a screw on lid. Don't go for the jumbo jar though, no one needs that much cake! 

I've been using the same yellow cake recipe for years now and am always so impressed with how it turns out. If you want to use your own recipe, make sure it's a dense cake- this just makes it so much easier to cut the cake into circles. 

Ingredients for the Cake
- 1 cup butter at room temperature
- 2 cups sugar
- 3 cups self rising flour 
     * add 1 1/4 tsp baking powder and 1/4 tsp salt for each cup of flour
- 4 large eggs
- 1 cup milk at room temperature
- 1 tsp vanilla extract 

Steps
Preheat oven to 350°F
Grease two 9 inch cake pans with butter and then sprinkle flour in the pan ensuring it is fully covered. This will save you so much time and energy when trying to get the cakes out of the pan!
Cream butter until fluffy, then add the sugar and continue to cream. This can take about 6-8 minutes! Next, add in the eggs one at a time, beating after the addition of each egg.
Add in the flour and milk, alternating between the two. Add in the vanilla.

Divide the batter up into 2 cake pans and bake for about 20-30 minutes. The best way to check if it is cooked is to put a skewer into the middle of the cake and pull it out slowly. If there is no batter on the stick they're ready to come out! Cool for 5-10 minutes and turn cakes out of the pan.

Ingredients for the Icing
- 3 cups icing suger
- 4 tbsp milk
- 1 cup butter at room temperature
- Food colouring (optional)

Steps
Whip the butter until it begins to turn white. This may take a few minutes so be patient! Add in the icing sugar and milk and whip until combined. 

Now for the most exciting part! You're going to need to make circular cut-outs in the cake in order to create the layers for the cake. I used a glass to cut the holes, but if you have a circular cookie cutter by all means use that! The amount of layers you will need depends on how large of a jar you are using.
Once you have all the layers cut out, it's time for the assembly! Push one layer of cake into the jar, followed by one layer of icing and then repeat until you've filled your jar, making sure the last layer is icing.
For the icing, putting it into a piping bag and squeezing it into the jar rather than using a spoon was so much easier! Add some colourful sprinkles or chocolate shavings to the top layer of icing for a little bit of extra cuteness to your cake in a jar! Once you're pleased with the final product, screw on the lid, wrap it with some ribbon and gift gift gift away!
-Stay tuned for the rest of our Do It Yourself Gift Series-

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