How to Make the American Flag Cake

The 4th of July is this week! We’re so ready- fireworks, grilling, sparklers… color us patriotic!

As the big day draws closer, our Pinterest newsfeed has been bombarded with red, white and blue crafts and recipes. As we were looking for something to try, our friend the Cooking Queen posted this jaw dropping flag cake from Betty Crocker. A hidden American flag inside of a cake sounded AWESOME, but also a little too good to be true, so (of course) we had to call shenanigans. Although it did take some time and effort, our flag cake turned out pretty awesome!

Our Version                                            Pinterest Version

First we gathered out ingredients:

2 Boxes of white cake mix
1 Container of icing (vanilla/white icing looks best)
Red food coloring (we found that the gel food coloring works best)
Blue food coloring (we found that the gel food coloring works best)
2 nine-inch baking rounds

1) Combine ingredients for the first box of cake mix to make the cake batter.

2) Divide evenly into 4 bowls (ours ended up being about a cup and a half in each bowl)

3) Add red food dye to three of the bowls of batter (we didn’t measure how much dye, we just kept adding until it looked red enough). These three bowls of red icing will be your three red stripes.

4) Grease the pans well and pour two of the bowls of red batter into the 9 inch rounds.

5) Bake for about 15 minutes (double check to make sure they look done).

7) Let cool and gently remove from pans. They should look like really thin cake layers. Now, bake the third red layer and the one bowl of white cake mix in the newly vacated pans. At this point you should have three red layers and one white.

8) Mix second box of cake batter and divide it into halves. Dye half of the batter blue.

9) Grease your pans again and pour the blue batter into one pan. This layer will be twice as thick as the red and white layers because it is made from half a cake mix instead of a fourth of a cake mix. Pour half of the white cake mix that is left over into the other pan. Bake both- keep in mind that you will need to take the white layer out before the blue layer.

Good job! You’re done with the actual baking! You should have one blue layer (made from 1/2 of a cake mix), three red layers (each 1/4 of a cake mix) and two white layers (each 1/4 of a cake mix). There will be a little batter left over- make a couple cupcakes!

10) Trim edges of the blue cake if it is bigger than the other layers (ours happened to be).

11) Use a cup (or other circular object to cut out the inside of one of the red layers.

12) You only need the inside part of the circle so feel free to snack on the ring while your finish making your cake.

13) Use the same circular object to cut the center out of the blue cake layer. You only need the outside ring this time, so feel free to snack on the little circle you cut out. (Or perhaps make some cake pops, if you’re feeling fancy!)

14) Using the same round object, cut out a circle from one of your white layers (keep the inner circle, you dont need the ring).

15) Here are all the pieces that you should have now (all of them should be the same thickness except for the blue layer which is twice as thick).

16) Place one large red circle on your plate first, followed by the large white circle, with a thin layer of icing in between.

17) Add the remaining large red layer and top with a thin layer of icing.

18) Add the blue ring of cake.

19) Ice the top of the small white circle and place it in the hole in the middle of the blue cake ring. Then add the small red circle on top of the small white circle.

20) You’re all assembled! Your cake should look like this before you ice it!

21) Ice your cake and you’re all done!

Take a deep breath, you just made it through our longest shenanigan ever. And there you have it- the most american cake that could ever possibly exist!

 As you can tell this Fourth of July cake is sure to steal the show at any Independence Day gathering. It took a bit of patience and more work than most cakes, but our sense of pride when we cut into it and revealed an adorable american flag peeking out was very real. Our friend Alex, who’s currently an ROTC cadet training for the U.S. Air Force, also approves!

This fun shenanigan is sure to impress during whatever shenanigans you get up to on the Fourth! Happy baking!

Check out some of our other yummy shenanigans!

4th of July Parfait         Red White & Blue Strawberries         2 Ingredient Healthy Pancakes

Thanks Bailey (cake on right) and Christian (cake on left) for sharing your American Flag Cakes, they turned out awesome!