Returning a non 'item' or non 'collection' using Laravel Fractal package

I am reading through a book called 'Build APIs you wont hate' by Phil Sturgeon. I am trying to following it quite close and i have come up against a little issue.

The methods that i can see in the book, are as follows, these are stored in the basecontroller;

protected function respondWithItem($item, $callback)
{
    $resource = new Item($item, $callback);
    $rootScope = $this->fractal->createData($resource);
    return $this->respondWithArray($rootScope->toArray());
}

protected function respondWithCollection($collection, $callback)
{
    $resource = new Collection($collection, $callback);
    $rootScope = $this->fractal->createData($resource);
    return $this->respondWithArray($rootScope->toArray());
}

protected function respondWithArray(array $array, array $headers = [])
{
    return response()->json($array, $this->statusCode, $headers);
}

This works fine if im actually returning an item or a collection, but what about if I want to return one or 2 strings, say a token or a token and message?

In my authentication controller, one of my methods called login, just returns a token and message

$data = ['token' => $token, 'message' => 'User authenticated successfully'];

I know I can simply build the correct JSON response in the authentication controller, but I would like to build all my response methods in one place to make it easier.

via Chebli Mohamed