It's Spring and the perfect time to share this "Having a Ball" Mason Jar Birthday Cake with Flowers. With the jar carved from a sheet cake and cupcakes for the flowers, it's a very easy, impressive and fun cake! Keep reading for a picture tutorial and details!
Originally published in May 2019, updated July 2022
This cake would be perfect for any spring or summer celebration... a birthday cake (use the year of birth on the jar as I did) or even for a bbq or picnic cake. This was made for my favorite person at our local nursing home and she loved it!
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Tools & Equipment to Make a Mason Jar Cake
Rectangle cake pan: I recommend this alphabet pan or a 9x13 cake pan. If you need more servings for a larger number of guests, you could easily do different sizes. Maybe upgrade to a 10x15 or 12x18 cake. You can see my favorite sheet cake pans here.
Knife (for carving the cake): I love my watermelon knife for carving!
Small Spatula: I have about a dozen of these small spatulas for covering cakes with frosting.
Piping Bag & Small Round tip: you can use whatever bags and tips you like - nothing specific or special ris equired to pipe the words and design on the cake.
Piping Tips for the flowers: I don't have pictures of piping the cupcakes, but you can see me piping rose cupcakes in this post. After decorating them with an Ateco #825 tip and some with a #104 petal tip. You can do all piped rosettes or mix them up with whatever designs you like for different buttercream flowers.
Americolor Gel Colors: For my design, I used Americolor Teal gel coloring, Americolor Ivory, Americolor Orange, and Americolor Electric Pink.
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Cake & Frosting Recipes
You can substitute pretty much any cake recipe flavor and frosting recipe that you love, but here are the ones I use and recommend. Both are doctored cake mix recipes and if you click through the links, you'll find all the ingredients needed. You could also follow the box instructions for a cake like this.
Vanilla Cake or Chocolate Cake: I used vanilla cake but chocolate cake or any yellow cake or white cake would also be great. The linked recipes are great for carving!
Vanilla Buttercream: I used my most popular vanilla buttercream recipe but any white frosting will do including this amazing cream cheese frosting.
For reference, I used a double batch of the vanilla cake batter to make the cake and cupcakes. This made enough dessert for around 30-35 guests.
Having a Ball Mason Jar Birthday Cake with Flowers Tutorial
First, you're going to need a sheet cake for the jar. I used this alphabet pan to bake my cake, but you could use any size/shape sheet cake that will work for you. I'd think a 9x13 cake pan would be a pretty common size that most cake decorators will have and will work great.
Because the alphabet pan comes with the squares used to make different letters, I used a couple of them to make the rough jar shape. Again, if you don't have this pan, you can easily just carve out the jar shape from a rectangle.
Using the alphabet pan gave me a slightly skinnier/taller "jar", but personally I don't think it would be a big deal for your jar to be wider and shorter as long as you have a recognizable shape.
Even with the pan I used, I still had to do some carving:
I cut off the sharp corners and all of the top edges to get a more rounded finish. My favorite knife for carving cake is this watermelon knife. After the cake was trimmed, I popped it into the freezer for 20-30 minutes to firm it up before frosting.
Then I mixed up the pale blue vanilla frosting and covered the cake. I used Viva paper towels to smooth it and round off the edges. For the color, I used a tiny drop of Americolor Teal gel coloring.
Then for the writing on the cake, I added another drop of gel color to darken it. Then I put it in a piping bag with a #3 round tip and added all the text and lines to bring it to life.
Buttercream Flower Cupcakes
I don't have pictures of piping the cupcakes, but you can see me piping rose cupcakes in this post. After decorating them with an Ateco #825 tip and some with a #104 petal tip, I used a dot of buttercream on the bottom of each cupcake to attach them to the board above the jar.
For the flowers, the colors were Americolor Ivory, then some Americolor Orange and Americolor Electric Pink. I added a few sugar pearls and sprinkles to the centers of the pink ones 🌸🌸🌸
My client only need about 30 servings of cake (cake and cupcakes included), so I added a dozen cupcake flowers. If you need more servings, make a larger bouquet with more cupcakes! Here's a really large cupcake bouquet I made without the Mason jar:
And that was that... an easy, impressive "Having a Ball" Mason Jar Cake with Flowers!
If you have any questions about this cake, please leave me a comment and I'll answer if I can!
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No blog post for this one yet... but a long-time favorite bouquet of cupcakesL:
Tammy
My question isn’t about the cake but the cake board! Where did you get that beautiful foil?? Does it come on a roll of some sort or do they actually make those types of boards for a sheet cake? All I ever find is the boring white ones that I have to cover with something. Ever since I started covering my boards I can’t even force myself to put a plain board or drum under even the simplest designed cake ♀️
PS I actually made that cake last year for a customer ☺️ It was a very beautiful design and yet so simple to achieve, although my flower cupcakes looked a little pathetic lol Cupcake decorating just is not my thing. Wish I could attach a picture. Anywho, hope you have a great week!!
Rose
Awww, thanks Tammy! I'm sure yours was gorgeous! I bought this foil wrap from CK Products (it comes in other colors too): https://amzn.to/2M6etvM. It's not FDA approved so you'll need to put parchment or some other barrier between the cake and the foil. Hope that helps!
Jeska
Wow.. this is really creative Rose! (Looks yummy too!) How long does it typically take to create this masterpiece?
Rose
Thank you! Decorating it was probably 2 hours or so.
Julia D
I'm into mason jar desserts and just have got to make your lovely Mason Jar Cake. I will have to work myself up to it. Thanks Rosebakes. ; D
SuzanneMatthews
What do you charge for a sheet cake?
Rose
Depends on the size, but $4 per serving is my minimum for any cake.
Katie
Hello! I am just curious what size cake board you used to create this masterpiece?
Rose
Oooh, I don't remember. My husband custom-cut it for me.