Red Velvet Christmas Cake -- Gift Idea

This is his "sample" cake.  He only used one box of mix so it's not high enough.

S. is working with several different departments on various projects, so there are lots of people to buy Christmas presents for...  You know how it goes -- you buy something for one person, you need to buy for all, since all of them are involved.  Last year, I baked lots of cookies and he gave small packages to everybody.  Everybody loved them.  Who would not like yummy homemade cookies?

This year, I am so tempted to bake but need to write.  Then I had an idea -- put S. to work!  Baking cookies is beyond his culinary expertise but mixing and baking bundt cakes is no big deal.  So I told him to buy several boxes of any cake mix he likes and several 12x12x12 cake boxes with clear lids (Michael's).  He chose Red Velvet.  Then he was entrusted with my mixer and instructed to read the directions on the box, lol.  He baked the cake batter in this bundt pan.

The first cake (shown above) did not come out as expected because one box of mix was not enough.  After that, he mixed two boxes and filled the pan to the edge of the pattern (not the edge of the pan -- doing that would result in an overflow).  Once his cakes cooled, he sprinkled them with powdered sugar.  We placed cakes on cake doilies and packaged them in cake boxes.  Added a red bow to each box...  And he wrote Merry Christmas! on each box, along with his initials.  His artistic writing always impresses me.  Done!  I should have snapped several photos of the finished product but we were finishing this morning and he was running late.  I hope he took some pics...

S. had fun, I was able to write while still observing the process and giving advice as needed, and his "creations" were the talk of the hospital today.

And the cost...

Red Velvet Cake Mix is $1.25 per box so the cost per cake is $1.25 x 1.5 = $1.88
3 eggs per box of mix so let's say 5 eggs per cake, for easy math...  $1.09 per dz so $0.45 per cake
1/3 cups of oil per box (let's say 1/2 cups per cake) is too much trouble to calculate so let's say $0.50 per cake; same goes for the powdered sugar
Bows came from the dollar store, 20 bows for $1, so $0.05 per bow.
Each cake box costs $2.49

Total:  $5.87