Handmade Bridal Shower Mason Jar Cookie Mix Favors
21 Sep
If you’re a regular reader of Heart Handmade Blog you already know that my “little” sister got married a few weeks ago. Now that all the pictures have been viewed, gifts opened and revelers returned home, I figure I’ll do a post a week highlighting the different ways we worked to make the wedding truly a handmade event.
First things first. We knew from the beginning we wanted to go a slightly different route for the bridal shower. From experience we knew how boring and monotonous a few hours spent watching someone opening gifts can be, and we wanted to create an event that was enjoyable for everyone (even if they weren’t being showered with presents). I’ll go into the specifics of our shower in another post, but today I’d like to focus on the gifts we gave out as a thanks for coming. We knew we wanted the bridal shower favor for our lovely family/friends to be something memorable, unique and functional. Nothing is worse than leaving a party with a useless trinket suitable for nothing other than next year’s yard sale. With the “function over fashion” idea in mind we brainstormed and all decided to put together a favor that our guests would be able to use.
How To Make a Cookie Mix Favor in a Mason Jar
Time:
Depends… How many people are you inviting? (It took us about 4 hours to assemble 50 jars and decorate them with the ribbons/fabric/tags)
Materials:
For each jar you’ll need one of each of the items listed below – unless other measurements are given.
- Mason Jar
- Flour (1 3/4 c.)
- Baking Soda (3/4 tsp.)
- Salt (3/4 tsp.)
- Granulated Sugar (1/2 c.)
- Chocolate Chips (1 1/2 c.)
- Brown Sugar (3/4 c.)
- “Love Beyond Measure” measuring spoon set
- Ribbon
- Fabric – two different colors to cover lid (we used tulle and cotton fabric that matched the wedding colors)
- Recipe Tag
- Rubber band
Cookie Recipe to Put Into Mason Jars (UPDATED, IMPROVED RECIPE!):
1 3/4 cups all-purpose flour
3/4 teaspoon baking soda
3/4 teaspoon salt
1 1/2 cups semi-sweet chocolate chips
3/4 cup brown sugar (packed)
1/2 cup granulated sugar
Recipe Tags:
We made the tags ourselves (the design was done by my brother-in-law) and printed them at home.
“Chocolate Chip Cookie Mix
PREHEAT oven to 375° F. Beat ¾ cup (1½ sticks) softened butter or margarine, 1 large egg and ¾ teaspoon vanilla extract in large mixer bowl until blended. Add cookie mix; mix well (you could add nuts too here if you wanted). Drop by rounded tablespoon onto ungreased baking sheets.
Bake for about 10 to 11 minutes or until golden brown. Cool on baking sheets for 2 minutes; remove to wire racks to cool completely for another 15 minutes. Makes about 2 dozen cookies.”
Steps:
1) Set up cookie mix ingredients for placement into the mason jars. My major tips to pass on after making over 50 of these jars are:
- set up an assembly line
- have the right tools for the job
One problem we ran into early in the assembly process was that the opening to the jars was smaller than the size of the measuring cups. Therefore, when you would dump the measuring cup ingredients into the mason jar you would lose some of the ingredient, which isn’t exactly the best thing when baking. One way around this unintentional loss of ingredients is to use a funnel to help you to put the ingredients into the jar. It is also a good idea to dump each ingredient into a large bowl from which you can work from, instead of trying to deal with the ingredients in their individual packages.
2) Put the cookie ingredients into the mason jars. If everything is in it’s own large bowl with the correct tool (knife to level the flour, funnel to dump in the sugar, etc.) this part goes fairly quickly. As you can see in the jars below – the bottom layer is the flour and baking soda. The first middle layer is the chocolate chips, second middle layer is the brown sugar and the top layer is the sugar. We had a varied assortment of mason jars to fill, but found that the widemouth jars were the easiest to work with and looked the best once completed. Keep in mind ANY mason jar will work, but if you don’t have any laying around/people willing to donate jars to you, I’d purchase the widemouth jars to save yourself a bit of hassle.
3) Place fabric on top of jar. We did not use any glue to attach the fabric to the tops of the jars because we wanted people to be able to re-use the jars as they pleased after making the cookies; think – flower vase, pencil jar, etc.
To put the fabric on the jars we simply cut out squares from the two different types of fabrics. To keep the fabric on the top of the jar we used a rubberband to hold the fabric in place.
4) Use ribbon to attach measuring spoons and tag. With the fabric held into position with a rubber band we then used a ribbon to attach the measuring spoons and recipe tag to the jar. The spoons are pretty heavy so you’ll have to work to figure out the best place for them to hang without drooping too much. You can get pretty creative with the bows, but seeing as it was about 11 pm by the time we got started on this final step we just opted to go with a simple “shoelace” type bow.
5) Give the mason jar cookie mix bridal shower favors away! Trust me, you’ll want to make extras to take into work, give to neighbors or just stare at for awhile.
Where to Buy Mason Jar Cookie Mix Favor Supplies (By Popular Demand):
Love Beyond Measure Spoon Set – Stainless Steel Measuring Spoons in Gift Box, 1 piece
Ball 1 Qt. Mason Jars – Ball Regular Mason Canning Jar 1 Qt., Case of 12
Ball WIDEMOUTH (Makes for Easier Scooping) 1 Qt. Mason Jars – Ball Wide-Mouth Mason Canning Jar 1 Qt., Case of 12
Kerr WIDEMOUTH (Makes for Easier Scooping) 1 Qt. Mason Jars – Kerr 0519 wide mouth jar quart, 32oz
Design SEO Hosting
Only comment i have is to up the flour to 2 cups. The cookies seemed to get really spread out when baked, needs some more flour to hold them together.
Love this idea! Wish I had done something so innovative for my own shower, the possibilities are endless aren’t they.
@mom – Thanks for the reminder to adjust the flour amount, we wouldn’t want a bunch of flat and sticky cookies!
@Treadgold – Thanks
And just because you’ve already done your bridal shower does not mean you can not re-use this idea for something else. Another reader suggested a way to use the idea for Christmas by using a gingerbread cookie mix with recipe and cookie cutter. The possibilities really are endless!!
I love making jars like this and will be blogging about them as one of my christmas makes. I agree – I generally make my dough a bit dryer (a touch more flour) as I find they spread a fair bit if you don’t.
Hi Harry and Rosie – Let me know when you post about your Christmas jars, I’d love to see them! Thanks for stopping by my little blog
Harry and Rosie,
Did you ever end up making the jars for your Christmas gifts? I’d love to see how they turned out!
What is the size of the jars that you used?
We used quart size mason jars for the cookie mix.
Thanks mom for responding
– I couldn’t remember!!
Where did you buy empty mason jars in bulk? I live in San Francisco, CA and was wondering if there was a local place I could buy them instead of buying them online and paying a hefty shipping cost.
Where did you get the heart -shaped measuring spoons? They are ADORABLE!
I’m off now to find where we got the spoons. I’ll put a link to them in the post when I find it.
As for the Mason Jars, we just put out an “APB” to our family members to donate any unused jars they had sitting around (the randomness of the different jars just added to the fun!) I will also find a place you can buy them in bulk though and add a link for you!
Happy jar making!
You could also recycle large peanut butter jars or Mayonnaise/Miracle Whip jars–they need not be glass; plastic may be better in some cases.
Love these! I am going to use this idea for a baby shower I am hosting on Saturday.
Awesome! I’d love to see a picture of how they turn out
Those are really cute! Do you know what the cost would be approximately?
Cost per jar?? Not sure, but I can run some numbers and figure it out for you
Ok, ran some QUICK numbers and I came up with a cost of about $2-3 per jar. Now, if you buy the ingredients, spoons and jars in BULK or use some super-saving coupon/deal hunting techniques I’m sure you can even come in even less than my estimation.
Keep in mind – the most “expensive” parts of the favors are the spoons, jars and chocolate chips. You could always forgo the spoons if your budget is tight, and use an entirely different (and cheaper) mix inside the jars (like oatmeal cookies) to save some cash.
Hope this helps!
Love this idea! Just found wide mouth Mason Jars at Ace Hardware online for $11.99. They offer free shipping if you send it to your local store.
Thank you so much for the wonderful Idea!!!! I will be making 45 of them for my sisters shower.
You’re welcome so much! Glad to help – check back and send me a picture of your jars, I’d love to see how they turn out
We made these for my daughter’s baby shower and added the extra flour, but the problem is that they are too dry now and taste “floury.” I tried adding more butter, (1/4 cup more), to make them smoother, but it didn’t work right and in turn made them sticky. We made 50 jars of these and I’m so embarrassed that they didn’t turn out right since this was our gift to our guests. Did anyone else have that issue? I’m going to try and fix the few jars we have so I can let our guests know how to make them properly. Any suggestions?
O no!!
I didn’t hear from anyone else that they had that happen, but in any case, I took a look at the recipe and made some adjustments (which you will see above).
Try it out with the new amounts and it should work PERFECTLY! Let me know how it goes…
I tried the new recipe and found it better to just remove 3/8 cup of flour and bake with the original instructions. I also made a batch with 1/4 cup flour less and they were still too dry. The batch with the extra brown sugar was too sweet. I hope this helps future favor makers!
Loved this idea! But the recipe you recommended did not fit in the quart mason jar you suggested. We used a different recipe and just cut it in half and it worked perfectly. Absolutely adorable favors and great idea. We ordered the spoons too and it adds the perfect touch.
When you said it took “us” 4 hours…how many people were assembling the jars? I am planning to do this for a bridal shower, just trying to gauge how long it will take for my and my husband or me and my friend.
Hi Amanda,
There were about 3 of us that did all the work for the jars
Hello Mandie,
I plan on usin this recipe for 45-50 jars. Do you happen to have the total amounts needed to complete all jars for each ingredient? Thanks so much for your help.
I’m doing these jars for my sisters baby shower and did a test batch to make sure they tasted good. I found that I had to add 2 eggs and this recipe only called for one. Has anyone else needed to do this as well?
Did you ever write a post about the bridal shower itself? I am interested in what you did.