How’d you get the cupcake into that jar?
Sullivan & Bleeker’s jarcakes are a hit, but their baking process remains a secret
They’re versatile, adorable and delicious.
The only real problem with cupcakes, says dessert impresario Elyse Wahle, is that they can be a little “precious,” she says; difficult to store — and eat with all that icing, those sprinkles and other elaborate decorations.
That’s why Wahle, owner of Toronto-based Sullivan & Bleeker Baking Co. decided to bake some into a Mason jar and call them jarcakes.
“They’re so convenient,” she says, turning briefly into a mime, taking a fake jarcake from her pocket and going at it with an invisible spoon.
“Flip them, shift them; you can do whatever you want with them. You can even put them in your purse!”
On dessert tables, at events and weddings, guests “lose their minds,” Wahle says, for the contained cupcakes that are sealed into a tidy, glass Mason container.
Whenever they turn up in stores — often including McEwan in the TD Centre and Independent City Market — customers can’t get enough. People will even coo over the decorations: there’s a birthday cake version complete with candle and a s’mores variety topped with cookie dough icing, a square of chocolate and a graham cracker.
Although jarcakes don’t comprise the largest part of Sullivan & Bleeker’s sweet stuff (the company really deals in cookies, making more than half a million each year), Wahle’s staff bake hundreds of cupcakes into mason jars each week ($6 each).
Just how they do it — bake the cakes into the jar, that is — is a bit of hocuspocus, Wahle says, with a glint in her eye. It’s something she gets asked about often. With good reason: the jar cake seems a bit like a ship in a bottle.
At a craft show once, a customer sidled up to Wahle, she says, begging for the how-to and wondering if Wahle made each individually, settling the jars one by one into a water bath. Not quite, Wahle says, chuckling. But there was trial and error. In fact, Wahle admits now, the first time she made them four years ago was in a friend’s oven. Frightened the heating glass might explode in her own oven, she decided not to try this at home. Whatever she did, it worked! After it’s mixed — be it vanilla, chocolate, banana or birthday cake — Wahle plops an ice cream scoop of batter into each ready Mason jar and pops them into the oven to bake. Just like her cupcakes, each is decorated by hand, starting with a swirl of icing.
And topped, maybe, with a slice of homemade Snickers-esque chocolate bar? Just like the Sullivan & Bleeker cupcakes sold in high, chic packages of six, the jarcakes are ethereally moist and decadent. And so worth it. “They’re cool and fun,” Wahle says. Need something sourced? Email mhenry@thestar.ca