4th of July Flag Cake

I mentioned on the last Five for Friday that Hubs offered to help me make this flag cake.

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Last week my friend Laura of Happy Hour With a Housewife, posted this flag cake on her Facebook wall. I showed it to Hubs and there was no 'bringing guacamole instead'. The deal, however, was that I needed him to help me, because, HELLO, this looks involved Kids! (I totally overused commas in that last sentence huh? All my readers with English majors just hit ‘unsubscribe’… although, if you’re still here after all the other messed up sentences I’ve posted before, you must be used to it by now).

So, anywhoodle, Sunday morning (because why not wait until the last minute) I went to the store to buy 2 boxes of white cake mix. If you’ve been following my blog for awhile you know that I like to make things from scratch, when I can, box cake wasn’t my first choice. I just knew it would be easier and make to correct amount of cake I needed. Guess what? I wasn’t the only one who wanted white cake mix for the 4th of July. Crazy huh? That was when I decided to bake the cake from scratch and that was also when I decided to spend the entire morning baking and decorating a cake, that later NO ONE WOULD EAT!* But I’ll get there…

For the best directions on how to construct the cake So Wonderful, So Marvelous and read this post. Here is the diagram she, and her friend Stephanie, made to show how the cake is constructed.

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There are also a couple of pictures posted on the process. I, of course, didn’t take any pictures of my process. I should have though because at my house there were many different sized bowl, a scale and math involved… FAR TOO MUCH MATH! and in the end, I didn’t bake enough blue.


See I don’t have 2 layers (1-red, 1-white) next to my blue, because my blue was too small. However, it still looks like a flag and no one at the party knew it was supposed to look better. So, GO US! Also, Hubs, who isn’t a big ‘cake person’ raved about how tasty it was – so I’m pretty proud of that. Take THAT, box cake :)

Which cake recipe did I use? I very very slightly altered this one and made 3 batches, although I would recommend making 4.

Click Recipe to Enlarge

Which frosting recipe did I use? I very very slightly altered this one.

Click Recipe to Enlarge

This was by far the best Cream Cheese Frosting I’ve every made. I credit the Crisco. Since, I can’t use butter because of the Hubs tummy, I had been using margarine. The Crisco makes it much fluffier and tastier.

I added some fresh (local and organic) fruit to make it a bit prettier and more festive.


You can see the mess I made of the counter behind. I loaded the cake onto my Wilton Cake Caddy just in time to change into my Red, White & Blue and head out the door.

* Okay, I mentioned no one ate our cake… which isn’t entirely true, but mostly. Our good friends invited us to their friends party in San Diego. Don’t get me wrong here, we had a lot of fun and the Hosts were awesome to have us and their friends were great. But, really how great can they be if they don’t like a flag cake? The more popular cakes present included a store bought hamburger cake, chocolate cupcakes with sprinkles, and chocolate chip cookies. Someone did cut my cake to show off how awesome the inside was, but didn’t eat the slice they cut out. Jane (my Bestie), me and the girl Jane talked into eating my cake where the only people that had a slice at the party. Hubs had to slices yesterday (1 for breakfast and 1 for dinner). I have half this cake left… I’m thinking of bringing it to work tomorrow.

Did you make anything festive for the 4th of July?