Another holiday is coming up…Independence Day!
We have always celebrated the fourth of July by going down to the lake at night and watching the fireworks and having a cookout with friends or family. This year, I wanted to do something special to celebrate. I saw this cake on a blog called 17 and Baking. I liked the original idea of the cake, but I wanted to change it up a bit.
**DISCLAIMER** I, by no means, am a professional baker. I know I said this when I made my Tangled Tower Cake, but I just want to make everyone aware that you don’t need to be a fancy baker to do what I’m going to do. I don’t have any fancy tools. I make do with what I have in my house.
Here is the finished product:
Finished Flag Cake
ITEMS NEEDED:
- 9 inch baking pan (4 would be best, but if you don’t have that many, just reuse the ones you have…it’ll just take a little longer…that’s what I did)
- 2 boxed packages of white cake
- 3 standard tubs of white frosting
- long piece of string/floss
- food coloring
Time to bake! I mixed up the first box of white cake. I added red food coloring. I used TONS of food coloring, but it seemed to stay a little pink. I have never worked with red velvet cake, so I didn’t want to start now. Maybe this would provide a more red color, but I think my red turned out okay. I divided the batter into two 9 inch baking pans and baked as directed on the package. TIP: I spray the pans with cooking spray and dust with flour to make it easier on myself to get it out of the pan once cooked.
Once out of the oven, I cooled it and took it out of the pan.
In the second box I mixed, I split into two bowls, and mixed one with blue food coloring and and the other with red.
3 red pans, 1 blue
I then wrapped all of the cakes in saran wrap and put them in the fridge to really cool off. I left mine overnight because I didn’t have time to do this all in one sitting. Gotta love being a busy mom!
Once out of the refrigerator, I had to cut the red cakes in half (so I had a total of 6 red layers). Instead of spending money on a cake cutter that I would most likely never use again, I learned a little trick from my mother.
- Take a piece of string or floss
- Carefully wrap the string around the cake, making sure to be in the middle and even around the cake
- Cross the string
Crossing the string
- Pull evenly as if you were tightening a knot (don’t worry if you feel like you are smushing the cake, you won’t)
- Once it has gone through the whole cake, just pull the string out from one side
- It’s cut evenly!
cut layers
Now it’s time to cut the blue cake! For this I used one of my coffee mugs that happened to be about 4 inches in diameter. If you have a round cookie cutter that size, it would work as well. I put the cup on the edge of the cake so that I could get two circles out of one cake. I just cut around using the cup as a template.
cup for circle template
Next I needed to cut a hole in the red cakes to make room for the blue circle insert. I placed the cut blue cake in the middle of the top of the 3 layers that I needed to cut. I then just cut around the blue cake as a template, making sure to go through all 3 layers.
cutting 3 layers of red for blue insert
ICING TIME!
Do 3 layers of red cake with white frosting in between. The thicker the better to get more even looking “stripes,” but I used 3 regular tubs of frosting, and I didn’t put a super thick layer in between because I knew this thing was going to be sweet already.
red layers with white frosting in between
Once I finished 3 layers, I layered the next 3 with the hole in the middle. I put the blue cake in the middle so that I didn’t over frost and not leave enough space for the cake to be inserted later. I just put both blue circles together with a REALLY small amount of frosting to more or less “glue” them together.
layering with blue cake in middle
When I finished all 6 layers, there was a small amount of blue sticking out at the top. I just used the string again to even it all out.
all layers on with blue in middle
Then I just frosted the entire cake with the white frosting. Like the other blogger did with her cake, I just left it plain and white. I like the idea of not decorating the outside since the inside is what is special about the cake.
frosted cake
As far as difficulty in creating this cake, I think it was actually quite simple. The main thing to remember is to keep the cakes cool so frosting it is easier.
Cutting a piece of this cake is the best part!
cutting the cake!
piece of the flag cake
I hope this is as big of a hit at our holiday get together as it is to me. And if it isn’t…I get a 6 layer cake all to myself!
