Mason Jar Cakes

Please excuse the following yellow tinted photos. My late night baking and indoor lighting made that inevitable. If only I have a studio set up in a corner of my kitchen or something. But anyways, I was able to cross mason jar cakes off my to-bake list before the end of 2k14. Technically, they are not "mason jar cakes" since they are not baked in the jar.


I just modified my cake presentation.

What prompted this to happen was actually a failed batch of macaroons. My mom bought this macaroon pre-mix from Hong Kong; all I needed to do was mix it with warm water and piped. I did everything accordingly (and added a bit of red food coloring), but they turned out sad.. wrinkly and without feet.

The simple steps were too good to be true.

Along with this batch of macaroon, I made a delicious and runny raspberry cream. The flavors were excellent and not too sweet. However, I made a fatal error in blending the raspberry in with the cream. The moisture of the raspberries kept the cream from whipping up properly or whipping at all. Key: FOLD raspberries in!

Raspberry filling
recipe adapted from A Sweet Soliloquy
4 oz cream cheese
4 oz heavy cream
1/2 cup powdered sugar
1 tsp vanilla extract
1/2 cup raspberries

1. Beat cream cheese till light and fluffy
2. Beat in heavy cream till soft peaks
3. Add powdered sugar and vanilla extract and continue beating till stiff peaks
4. Gently fold in raspberries**
5. Set aside in fridge before use

To not waste a tasty raspberry- cheesecake- ice- cream- tasting cream, I came up with a couple ideas. I ended up blending some gelatin in and leaving it to set overnight in the fridge. The resulting cream was a bit too firm but definitely more easy to handle.

I then proceeded to bake my trusty chocolate chiffon cake with reduced sugar (for my diabetic mom) to pair with the revised cream. (Changes: 60g sugar in yolk mixture reduced to 30g, 120g sugar in white reduced to 60g, homemade cake flour)


Here are the two mason jar cake creations:

1. Chocolate chiffon + raspberry cream + cocoa nibs

2. Chocolate chiffon + nutella cream + sliced almonds

I found that two layers of cake and two layers of cream gave the best portion. Between the two, the clear winner is the one with nutella cream! The cream was simply prepped with my leftover heavy cream and some travel packs nutella I took back from Paris. It was lightly sweetened and paired perfectly with the chocolate chiffon. Flavors were on point for both.

too much gelatin ;x

Promising-looking cake batter

Inverted cooling

Spongy with minor cracks

Cookie cutter cut too small of a circle

late night funsies

Second baking lesson: cut cake with mason jar! After cutting one layer of the cake, I finally asked myself why I didn't just cut with the mason jar for a perfect fit..

Overall, I had a lot of fun assembling and admiring my final products! I am satisfied with this first attempt.

Raspberry cream version

Flavor: 4 stars out of 5

Texture: 3 stars out of 5

Cream was too firm, flavors did not mend well

Nutella cream version

Flavor: 4.5 stars out of 5

Texture: 4.5 stars out of 5

Almost perfection. Leaving room for improvements (: