Happy Birthday

http://chefmom.sheknows.com/articles/817093/How-to-use-a-Mason-jar-as-a-baking-vessel was my reference in making these lovely cakes :-)

To create these you will need:

Mason jars - please adjust baking time on what jar size you use.  Pint jar requires approx. 50 minutes.  Ours took a little longer, but our oven is crap :-)

Cake mix -  We used 2 white cake mixes to make 7 pints cakes. Next time I will spread between 8.

Casserole dish for water bath - Mason jars cannot be placed directly in oven

2 containers of icing

food coloring

we added sprinkles, just for fun.

Preheat oven to 350

Prepare cake mix following directions or the in what ever way you prefer (we like to change them up for flavor).  Once everything is all mixed up ... split the cake into 6 separate containers and add food coloring (whatever your heart desires).  

Once, all colors are prepared pour them into the mason jars, in layers.  As pictured to the left.  We were not sure how much they would rise, so our plan was to just equally fill all 7 jars to the top of the a in Ball (we obviously used ball mason jars).

Again this is the first time we've tried this... so we split them into 2 batches (just in case we needed to make adjustments).  To the right is a photo of the first 4 in their water bath.  

It took almost 60 minutes before I was able to insert and remove a knife cleanly.  Removed from water bath and placed on cooling rack.  At this time I placed the remaining 3 cakes into the oven.  At this point I realized I could have easily spread my batter between the 8 jars I had originally planned to bake :/   

To make up for this error in judgement, I had to cut a hole into the middle for icing (my girls LOVE icing)  I just squeezed in as much as possible.  Since my cakes are almost to the top of the jars I couldn't  do anything fancy (thankfully) which is where the sprinkles came in!

To finish them off, I wrapped some ribbon around them and made a bow.  I thought of lots of fun ways to label these (like using chalk board paint on the lids or little cards on the front)  I was pressed for time I handed out a sharpie and asked everyone label their cakes to avoid confusion later (that's a lot of cake to eat in at one time).  Any leftovers could easily be taken home, probably saving me 5 pounds :-)

Note: I used all the cut out pieces to make smaller the-dye cakes for my littler girls :-)