American Flag Cake

In celebration of July 4th, I found a recipe on the Food52 website (https://food52.com/recipes/28811-american-flag-cake) for baking a cake that, when sliced, looks like the U.S. flag. Though it seemed a little daunting, I decided to do it. My finished product didn’t come out quite as clean cut as theirs, but the reaction from my family was definitely worth baking all day for. And I mean all day—with one 9″ pan to make 5 cakes (I wanted to make it 9″ but couldn’t find disposable pans at that size), I was literally mixing, baking, cooling, cutting and icing for over 9 hours. I may not be the most skilled baker but I’ve got heart.

The main ingredients. I used boxed cake mix but made the icing from scratch following their recipe.

First red cake. Even with about 60+ drops of red food coloring, it still looked pink.

Didn’t do such a good job cutting it in half.

It’s difficult resisting the urge to eat the excess cake, so I didn’t.

Second red cake.

Fortunately, the red gets darker during baking.

The blue cake with about 60 drops of blue dye. It looks teal because of the yellow from the egg.

Right before going in the oven. I added a bunch more blue dye but was still worried it was going to be teal instead of dark blue.

Assembly commences.

First two layers of red and white.

All the layers needed for assembly.

As with the red cake, this came out a lot darker than it went it, which made me very happy.

Red, white, red, white. Now ready for the blue.

To keep the blue in the upper left hand corner, a 5″ round is cut from the center. It then crowns the cake.

One white and one red layer are then cut into smaller 5″ pieces to fit perfectly inside the blue ring.

5″ gone from the inside and out.

Ready for icing.

Monster cake.

Colorful leftovers could easily be used for another cake.

Icing complete.

Slightly askew. Fortunately that won’t affect the taste.

Very happy with the outcome, both in appearance and taste.

Because the weather was warm, I kept this in the fridge all day. I took it out about 15-20 minutes before serving. I think it could’ve used another 15 minutes before cutting into it because it was still pretty solid and didn’t slice as easily.