Cake in a jar

I was feeling very brave and decided I wanted to try baking a cake in a jar. I’ve seen them on lots of American blogs, including spectacular rainbow coloured ones. My first problem was finding glass mason jars but I tracked down some Kilner jars in our local bake shop which were suitable. As this was my first attempt I used a white packet mix. I couldn’t find any neon food colouring so divided the mixture in two and added cocoa powder to half the mixture.

I then layered the mixture inside the jar with the chocolate layer at the bottom and the plain mixture on top, placed the jar on a baking tray filled with water and baked it at 180° for an hour. I initially took the cake out after 20 minutes but it wasn’t cooked through so kept checking it until a skewer came out clean.

After the jar had cooled down I filled it with my favourite icing (Betty Crocker’s Vanilla Rich and Creamy Icing), topped with chocolate sprinkles. It looked great – even if I do say so myself!

After dinner we sat down to eat it and the top half was delicious. It was novel eating cake directly from a jar. However, about half way into it we realised that the cake mixture hadn’t cooked properly in the middle so if I did it again I would bake it for longer at a lower temperature. Recommended if you want to try something different. These can also be given as a gift as the cake keeps for up to 5 days.