Lordy, lordy, looks who's 4...well, that's it.

Well, the day has come and gone. My smart, beautiful, hilarious little girl turned 4 last week. It was difficult to determine who was more excited about it, her or me. She loves being 4 like all of her friends and learning to ride her big girl bike. I love that with every passing day, she learns more and becomes this fabulously independent lady. She writes all of her letters, is learning to sound out words, and can kick all of our butts at Go Fish. *sigh*

So anyway, I know everyone is wondering what kind of cake she had. Well, for our family birthday party this year, I decided to skip making an actual cake. In previous years, we've always wound up with an abundance of extra cake that none of us want to eat after day two. This year, I tried the newly popular Mason Jar Cupcakes. There are a plethora of tutorials, and in citing just one, I'm doing a disservice to the 20 others that are out there, so I'm not citing anything. It's not plagarism; no one has a copyright over a cupcake recipe.

I went to Publix and got a 12 pack of jars for about $8.

(The lids were drying at the time of the picture. You'll see what I mean in a minute.)

All it took was 1 box of white cake mix, about 2 tbsp of cornstarch, and a box of food coloring.

I mixed the cake mix according to the box instructions, then mixed in the cornstarch to thicken the mixture for layering. You can opt not to do this if you want funky tie-dye looking layers, but my OCD wouldn't allow this.

Separate the mixture into sandwich bags; the number varies based on the number of colors you're using. I used four. Add about 4-5 drops of food coloring into each bag, let out the excess air and seal. Use the countertop to knead, blending the coloring into the mix.

Move the batter away from one corner and cut it to allow for piping. Be aware of your size; a larger cut will cause the batter to pipe out quickly.

Layer each of your colors into your mason jars (note: these do not need to be greased prior to using). The easiest method I found was to use up each color at once, meaning I put blue in all of my jars, then green, then yellow, then red.

Fill a 9x13" pan with about 1/2" of water and place your jars in the pan. Typically you would bake according to the box directions, but because my oven runs so hot and I was paranoid about burning them, I baked mine at 350 for 30 minutes. They came out perfectly moist and fluffy.

For icing, I decided to keep with my sandwich bag theme and fill a bag with icing and pipe it into the cupcakes. Kristen helped put the sprinkles on top. :)

Here's my finished version, complete with the decorated tops I made. You can find my tutorial on that here.