Sunday, July 22, 2012

Celebrate the Fourth of July with fireworks and cake

Are you looking for that perfect themed dessert for your Fourth of July cookout? While I know this post is a little too late for Fourth of July this year you can get a head start for next year or Veteran's Day, Memorial Day, or just a random Tuesday!
Amazing what you can find on Pinterest, a co-worker showed me a picture of this cake and I immediately went to Pinterest and found it in no time complete with the recipe! The end product of this recipe is when you cut into the cake it looks like the American flag! The original recipe comes from justapinch.com! I made a few changes to the original recipe, one being I used cream cheese frosting instead of buttercream because who doesn't love cream cheese frosting?! I also used a golden cake mix instead of a white cake mix but would consider making it red velvet next time. Some other things I will do differently next time I make this cake would be to alternate between red and white layers of cake instead of just using the frosting as the white layers, this was you can be assured the white stripes show! I did 7 layers of red cake and 6 layers of white icing! It may sound difficult but I promise you it really isn't! Ok, let's get to the recipe!

Ingredients for Cake
2 boxes white (golden) cake mix
1 1/2 bottles red food coloring
1/2 - 1 bottle blue food coloring
1 bottle white star sprinkles (Unfortunately did not include the stars this time but next time for sure!!)

Ingredients for Cream Cheese Frosting
8 ounces cream cheese
1 stick of butter (softened)
1 pound powdered sugar
2 tsps vanilla

Steps for designing your Flag cake
1. Make one box cake mix according to directions, add 1 bottle red food coloring and separate into 2 10" round pans and bake according to the package.
2. Make the second box of cake mix according to the directions and reserve 3 cups of white mix, set aside. Color the remaining mix with the other 1/2 bottle of red food coloring. Color the reserved mix with the blue food coloring. If using the white star sprinkles gently fold them into the blue cake mix now.
3. In one 10" cake pan pour half of the red mix in. In the other pan place a 6" round cake pan in the center of the pan. In the 6" pan pour the blue mixture and on the outer pan pour the rest of the red cake mix. Note: If you do not have a smaller round pan do what I did, make your regular red and when you cut the final three layers(I will explain this in a minute) you will need to cut a hole in the center of each cake. I used a glass with a large diameter as my measurement. I also made the blue cake in a pan of its own and cut out from the center using the same glass as my measurement. Put the blue cake in the center of the red cake.
4. Once each cake has cooled you will divide it into half. You should have 4 whole red cakes before you begin dividing them. Do not divide the blue cake.
5. Alternate layers of red cake and cream cheese frosting If you end up using a white cake mix I would suggest doing a layer of red, frosting, a layer of white, frosting, repeat
6. Remember the final three red layers will have a hole in the center so you can place the blue inside. Once you have all the layers in place frost the complete cake.

Steps for Cream Cheese Frosting
I would suggest doubling the recipe to insure enough icing
1. Mix cream cheese and butter together.
2. Mix in the powdered sugar and vanilla.

Your flag cake is complete! You could add some red and blue decorations to the top but I chose to keep it simple so when they cut into it everyone would be surprised. I took this cake to work the week of Fourth of July...it was killing me to wait for them to take the first piece and see the flag! Now for pictures! Happy Baking!

Cake Preparations


Final product! Happy Fourth of July!!


To show how amazing my mom is, she was visiting me the week of July 4th and surprised me with this for my breakfast that morning! Toast complete with blueberries, strawberries and bananas.


Vulcan celebrates the Fourth in style!!!!


- Posted using BlogPress from my iPad

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