Airmail Cosmopolitan Cupcakes

Last weekend, I baked some cosmopolitan cupcakes in jars to mail out to my aunt's coworker. During her training process, this woman had been particularly helpful and my aunt wanted to send her something to thank her.

Dozen cupcakes boxed up and ready to ship

After discussing a few flavor options, we settled on my cosmopolitan cupcakes, the very first cupcake I ever posted on this blog. They are raspberry cake with lime frosting and hot pink sanding sugar sprinkled on top.

Before the lid went on

It's been really hard to find time/energy to bake anything outside of class, so I was happy for this opportunity. These went out on Monday and were received in Pennsylvania on Tuesday. Hopefully they were enjoyed!

Cupcake Jars from Last Week

The cupcakes in jars idea has solved the whole dilemma of shipping cupcakes. Since my friend Dan's request, I've shipped out several more boxes of cupcakes. Last week a friend of mine asked me to send half a dozen to her friend as a gift. The recipient is the co-chair of 80 Million Strong, a coalition advocating for jobs for millenials. Because of this, my friend wanted rainbow cupcakes in the organization's colors - blue, red, orange and green - with green star sprinkles on top.

Cupcakes fresh out of the oven

I may have mentioned this before, but when it comes to my cupcakes, I'm an obsessive perfectionist. I was able to find multicolored star sprinkles, so I picked out the green ones individually much to the astonishment and dismay of my mom who watched this.

Finished cupcakes, before lids

I really liked the way the rainbow cupcakes looked in the clear jars - very pretty. The rainbow jars are something I'd like to experiment more with in the future.

Carefully selected sprinkles

Cupcakes in Jars

Late yesterday afternoon, I got a call from my friend Dan to see if I had yet to figure out a solution to shipping cupcakes. I had actually just stumbled across the idea to bake cupcakes directly in Mason jars in order to be able to ship them securely and was waiting for my shipment of 24 Kerr Mason jars. After calling around in Toms River, I found a local hardware store that stocked them and ran over there pick them up. Having never read up on how exactly to do this, I just prepared the batter, filled the jars, and stuck them in the oven. As the first batch was baking, my mom was reading horror stories on the Internet of glass jars with cupcakes in them shattering in too high of a temperature. Fortunately for me (and everyone within distance of the oven), no shards of glass came flying out. The whole process went relatively smoothly considering I had never done it before.

Once they were baked and cooled, I piped the frosting directly into the jar and added some sprinkles on the vanilla ones. I made a dozen labels to make them "prettier" and more personal. And then I tied them with a ribbon, forged a card in Dan's name (just kidding- He told me what to write), and packed them up to be shipped to Massachusetts.

Today I had my assistant (my mom) take them to the Post Office and mail them because I had to work. I should have known what to expect...That being a mom herself, she would choose the shipping option that got them there for Sunday regardless of how much it cost. When I expressed concern that it was really pricey, she put it this way: "Tell him to suck it up. She's worth more than that." Fortunately there were no complaints from Dan (which is unbelievable if you know him--joking Dan!) about the insane shipping cost.

I feel like pretty much the minute this post publishes, I'm going to be inundated with requests from my friends to mail them cupcakes all over the US. Kim already asked, but being as her address in Costa Rica is something like "50 meters from the Burger King, Liberia, Costa Rica", I don't think I will be able to send them to her any time soon.