DIY cake pan, cake box and paper bags!

Just recently, my sister got into no-bake cheesecake and a few of her friends requested to try her cake. (I'll say they're really bold because my sis is just a beginner with almost zero experiences!)

And like expected, there was chores! First, our freezer is so stuffed it couldn't fit the 10" cake pan she bought! And we can't just take all those frozen poultry and seafood out! (Yes, our fridge is very packed as we gotten one that is too small for our family size)

So in the end, she have to make the cake in our ice tray instead and we have to lay a layer of plastic wrap so that taking out will be easier. The other process are quite ok, but right at the end, she have swimming strawberries because she had set them in too late and they're not held strong enough by the cheese layer.

Anyway, she did made a first batch - 

Our ice tray is a square of about 21-23cm and we only managed to cut out 2 of these. I think it's only about slight more than half out the whole. The rest are just ... well ... not so pleasing to the eyes.

Well, our brilliant plastic wrap idea didn't work that well and we've very very ugly edges and quite a lot of cream and jelly stuck to the wrap! 

(We did a batch with baking paper too, it turned out a little better but still the sides aren't that attractive.)

But you know, at least we did have 2 of these presentable ones to give away. BUT, how do we package it?

My sister did get some boxes for cakes but it couldn't fit these special-sized cakes. The breath is ok, but the height won't fit. We thought hard about whether to cut a strawberry away but that would make the box look too empty! Like an S size trying to fit in an L size!

In the end, we trimmed the sides very very carefully (almost touching one of the strawberries) and got it to finally fit in the box. 

After seeing my sister struggle so hard to find just a suitable packaging for her cake, I decided that maybe we should make something so that it would fit our needs/

Firstly, I DIY a cake pan with cardboard and wrap it up with a layers of plastic. Not very pretty, I know. I just hope it works.

To be honest, I was very nervous, I was very afraid that it would not work and all the ingredients and time would be wasted!

Well, it held its ground! Phew!!

Now, to the next one, the box.

I choose to go with the version with window as I just love the window idea... LOL. I used 3 pieces of A4 size kraft paper of 350gsm to make these boxes.

However, I did made a mistake in the template; I missed out the back of the box! And I only discovered that after I have glued the "frame" of the box. So now I can only work with the "drawer" part of the box and blue the back into it. It makes the drawer a little tight and harder to pull out. But at least it won't get stuck!

 

So with the box done, why not make a paper bag for it too?

Actually I do have paper bags of various size and shapes at home. I kinda "panic-buy" from Taobao previously. I remember it was Chinese New Year and we didn't have enough right-size bags for the gifts. So we ended up rushing out to get some, and we nearly not get any and ended up having to buy at a higher price than usual.

Anyway, back to topic, since we've very "special-sized" everything. We still need a special sized bag. None of the paper bags we've fits the box "presentably enough". How so?

Well, it'll be ugly if you've lots of empty spaces in your bag. It looks "stringy". And most of the bags we have are too tall or wide. And a shopping trip didn't solve the bag problem. 

So yeah... have to DIY again...

I made 3 bags as I did 3 boxes too.

This is actually a trial piece so it's made just with plain drawing block (I estimated 110 or 120gsm). It turned out quite well so we decided to use it. My sis thinks its too plain so I printed some sticks and pasted them on.

Next, I discovered some coloured A3 construction papers that was "idling" in my store. So I decided to just use them to make another one. But this one is slightly thinner (I reckon it's about 70-80gsm).

So I added a thick 300gsm paper at it's base. (And later on, pasted semi-glossy sticker paper on the inside to make it slightly waterproof)

It also fell on the plain side, so I drew some strawberries and pasted them at the corner!

For the last one, I pasted the thin construction paper on the drawing block and it's just the right thickness!

This is how the bottom looks!

Yeay! All done and packed!!

This is a fun yet tiring project. It started with a problem and then met with more problems. I've actually made at least 2 templates for the paper bags and done quite a few mockups.

I started with thick 300gsm paper but the cracking at the fold lines are really bad. So I've to abandon the idea. In the end, the 100ish gsm paper does the work and they've much neater fold lines!