Red, White, & Blue Tie-Dye Cakes in a Jar

This was my first attempt at the "tie-dye" cake method I've seen on so many facebook blog links. The concept is easy and putting the cakes in small Mason jars makes the cutest little desserts. For this particular design I used a Stars & Stripes Funfetti cake by Pillsbury. That is why you see more red and blue in the overall cake. I dyed a portion of the batter red, another portion blue, and the last I left white, but added the red and blue sprinkles included with the Funfetti cake. Had I not added the sprinkles I would have had a more uniform design of a red layer, white layer, and blue layer, but I think the sprinkles added a more tie-dye effect. For the most part I was happy with the final result of the cakes, but I think I was a little ambitious when it came to the icing...

I had an icing fail. I was attempting to do tri-color icing that I had seen on another baking blog and followed the tips exactly. I filled three smaller icing bags with three icing colors, in honor of the 4th of July, red, white, and blue. I then put the three smaller bags into a larger piping bag. All was going well until the bag burst. Oh well.... I got 4 cakes with pretty swirls and the rest with a muddled mess of icing in varying colors... basically whatever I could scrap out of the busted bag. I can laugh now at the fail, but it wasn't so funny when I was covered in 3 colors of icing. In the end it doesn't matter so much how it looks... it's more about how it tastes and you can't go wrong with Funfetti! I'm sure everyone will enjoy them all the same... icing fail and all.

A few tips if you intend to bake cakes in a jar.

Bake at 350 for 20 to 30 minutes. This is using the 8 oz. Mason jelly jars.
Make sure you spray the inside of the jar very well with baking spray such as PAM.
Use at least 20 drops of food coloring for a vibrant cake color.
When baking put jars in a shallow baking dish with 1/4" of water in the bottom of the baking dish.

Now I'm sure you're just longing to see the icing fail.... I won't disappoint. Here are photos of the finished product.

 

The four on the left were piped with the star tip. I never quite got the perfect tri-color swirl even before the bag burst and although I had to make due on the last six I don't think they look too bad. I mean they could have looked worse... right? Come on... humor me. ha.

 

Add sprinkles and no one will know the difference. Clever sprinkles!

Side view of the tie-dye effect. Remember you see more blue and red throughout because I used the Stars & Stripes Funfetti batter in the middle.