Every Labor Day weekend my husband, friends and I cram ourselves into our SUV and make a 6 hour drive to Buffalo, New York.

It is a weekend filled with great friends, food, relaxing and enough laughs to make your stomach hurt.

This year was definitely no exception. This year we got fancy.

We decided to rent a minivan to be more comfortable. Leather interior, DVD player, transformer seats, power side and rear doors – this van had everything. To those of us with our older model cars it was fancy.

Previous trips together had taught us to stick with what you know so we aimed to only stop at certain gas stations along the way. You never know what to expect for most gas station restrooms. That has got to be road trip fancy.

During the trip there was a lot of excitement and laughs involving water bats, scones, Cards Against Humanity, wine store problems, giant stuffer hamburgers and many things fancy.

I had planned to make these little chocolate covered cherry cakes a couple of weeks prior to the trip. Cherry chip cake is my absolute favorite and I knew everyone else going liked it as well. I adapted the recipe from one of my favorite blogs, Sweetapolita.

I baked them in mason jars to make it easy to transport and avoid the whole crumbs everywhere situation. I didn’t really think about it until now but homemade little cakes with whipped ganache? Most definitely fancy.

Makes 6 mason jar cakes

 Notes:
*I always measure dry ingredients in grams using a scale. The volume measurements I provided are approximate so you may not get the same results
*You can also use this recipe to make 12 cupcakes

Ingredients for Cherry Cake:

-225g sugar (approx 1 cup)
-6 Tbsp butter, at room temperature
-185g flour (approx 1.5 cups)
-10g baking powder (approx 1 Tbsp)
-Pinch of salt
-¾ cup milk, at room temperature
-3 egg whites, at room temperature
-¼ cup maraschino cherry juice, at room temperature
-½ tsp vanilla extract
-2/3 cups maraschino cherries, chopped

Ingredients for Chocolate Ganache:

-8 ounces dark chocolate (I used 72%)
-8 ounces of heavy cream (or heavy whipping cream)

Instructions for Mason Jar Cherry Cake:

-Preheat oven to 350 degrees
-Grease 6 pint size glass mason jars, lids removed, and place on a sheet tray
-Cream butter and sugar together until light and fluffy (2-5 minutes)
-Sift flour, baking powder and salt into a bowl
-Whisk milk, egg whites, cherry juice and vanilla extract into a separate bowl
-Once butter and sugar are fluffy, alternate adding dry and wet ingredients; beginning and finishing with the dry ingredients (dry, wet, dry, wet, dry).
-Evenly distribute batter into each jar
-Bake 25-30 minutes, or until a knife inserted all the way down comes out clean
-Let cool 20 minutes and then remove from jars carefully, using a knife to loosen from the sides
-Place on cooling rack until they are completely cooled.
-To assemble, trim the tops off each cake and then cut cake in half.
-Pipe chocolate ganache between layers
-Cover and store at room temperature up to 4 days

Instructions for Chocolate Ganache:

-Finely chop chocolate and place in a bowl that has a lid or a plate can sit tightly against
-Scald milk by bringing just to a boil and removing from heat
-Immediately pour into bowl with chocolate. Stir once and quickly put a lid or plate on top to trap steam
-After 5 complete minutes whisk and the ganache will come together like magic
-Transfer to fridge for 5-10 minutes or until no longer warm
-With electric mixer and whisk attachment, whisk until light and fluffy, 2-5 minutes