I have discovered a wonderful place on the interwebs. A place much like CraigsList, but where everything is free.
That place, sirs and madams, is called Freecycle.
Essentially a forum of stuff that people have and are eager to get rid of (or stuff that people hope others are eager to get rid of) Freecycle has a great mentality that, rather than throwing your unwanted stuff away, you should give it to someone who needs it. It’s a mix of altruism and eco-consciousness, with a nice dash of community.
Well, I’ve been lurking on Freecycle recently, partially to locate bookshelves or other fun things for my room, and partially because Valentine’s Day was coming up and I wanted to do something for the lovely folk down at City Year. That’s when I stumbled upon a posting for baby food jars, tons of them.
Now, what could I do with baby food jars?
I soon hit upon a solution and after driving down to South Park to pick them up and gathered up my supplies. I was going to make jar cakes!
Jar cakes are pretty easy, they’re just cupcakes that are cooked in jars. Since most glass can stand pretty high temperatures, the 350 degrees needed for your standard yellow cake is not even a problem.
Now, because these weren’t proper canning lids and jars I didn’t worry about all of the steps that I usually would have to if I was going to properly can them. It is, however, possible to can cakes like this and allowing them a much larger shelf life. All I did though, was send them through the dishwasher and then spray them with some Pam.
I used a yellow-cake mix and, after a couple of tests, determined the right amount of mix to put into the jars. Turned out that it wasn’t much at all.
Here’s what they looked like after they were done.
I wanted to leave plenty of room for the frosting. There were a couple that got too full though, and those I ended up just hollowing out. But half the fun is in how they look at the end so I tried pretty hard to keep them at the half way mark.
I added on some stickers I had made to make them a little more Valentine’s Day-ish. In the future I would add these on at the end, they got a little mussed with the frosting and closing the lids.
I used a buttercream frosting my mom was nice enough to share. (1 cup butter, 4 cups sifted powered sugar, 1 teaspoon vanilla, 2 tablespoons milk) and piped the frosting in using a ziplock bag with a corner cut out ( I really really need to get a proper pastry bag). The frosting was delicious and had a great consistency after I beat it a bit with my mixer, but after looking at what went into it I was sincerely glad I was making these for someone else.
Added some red sprinkles, put on the lids, and they were done and ready to be delivered! Little mini-cakes for the holiday.
Thank you Freecycle!