Saturday, March 5, 2011

Cupcakes in a Jar. Or, How to Ship a Cupcake

Someone (it was my mother) told me that anything can be shipped.  I didn't really believe that...I mean, yes, it's probably technically true, but that doesn't automatically mean it's a good idea.  I have seen these things to send individual cupcakes:

Cup A Cake Individual Cupcake Carrier - Dark Blue

But the empty space between the frosting and the top of the container made me think the cupcakes wouldn't arrive in one non-messy piece.  So I did some surfing on the web to find some other options, and I finally decided to send cupcakes in a jar and let go of my ideas of how a proper cupcake should be presented. 

Instead of making cupcakes in wrappers and a pan, I lined up glass canning jars up on a cookie sheet and filled them about halfway.  Don't do this.  It was too much batter--they baked completely over the top of every jar and I had to throw the cake away, wash all of the jars and start over.  So I tried again, filling them about a third of the way. 

I wanted to add ganache to help kind of seal the cupcakes into the jars, so I used this recipe that I made for the neighbor trays at Christmas.  Once the cake was completely cool, I added the frosting and ganache to the jars, then put them in the freezer.  I had a couple of taste testers try them out to make sure they were ok (you know I really hate the mint stuff, so I wasn't going to do it) and that functionally, they weren't too awkward.  You have to eat these with a spoon, but it's nice because you can get a little bit from each layer of the jar in each bite. *I looked for wide mouth mason jars but found none--I think those would be even better.*



 
I used a giant circular scrapbooking punch and some ribbon to add a little bit of color to the lids, then wrapped the jars in plenty of bubble wrap and boxed them up.


They weren't going too far, so I didn't feel the need to overnight them and just went with UPS ground shipping.  This particular shipment went to my Grandma, who shares my love of frosting and is recovering from a recent medical procedure.  She sent me an email (she's a very hip Grandma--she's on Facebook too)  to let me know she got them and it sounds like they arrived in good shape.  Success!

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