Happy July, friends! There’s no holiday I love more than the Fourth of July. I love what it stands for, I love how we celebrate it, and I love how we can bust out the red, white, and the blue in any way we can over the holiday. Also, I’m slightly addicted to fireworks, so there’s that, too. 😉 This flag cake is everything! I usually celebrate the 4th with some kind of flag cake, but this year’s version is my ultimate favorite. Grab your cake rounds, a Wilton 1M piping tip, and let’s jump right in!

In times past, I’ve made this cake by baking red and white cake layers, and keeping the blue layer the same. But this year I wanted to keep the flag design on the inside of the cake as simple as possible. So red cake layers it was, and one blue layer, too! I’ll walk you through the steps below.

First, you’re going to want to start with your favorite white cake base. Scratch or doctored cake mix, go for whatever you love best.

You’re going to want to have FOUR 6″ cake rounds prepped and ready. Split your batter into two bowls (1/4 of the batter in one small bowl, and 3/4 the batter in a medium one). Color the small bowl’s worth of cake batter into a dark blue hue (I love “Navy” from Americolor). And then color the medium bowl’s worth of batter to red. Bake as directed, cool, wrap in plastic wrap, then place in the freezer for up to 30 minutes to get nice and cold.

Why cold? Why am I freezing my cake layers?!

Well, you want to enjoy your flag-making experience, don’t you? 😉 Trust me.

Let’s prep those cake rounds!

First, slice your red cake rounds in half (not like a half circle, but so that you have TWO skinny red layers instead of one cake layer). Repeat with all the red cake layers.

Next, take TWO sliced red cake layers and cut a 3″ diameter hole in the center of them.

For the blue cake layer, do the same 3″ hole, too.

So to recap: slice all the red cake layers in half, cut a 3″ hole in the center of two of them, and the same 3″ hole in the blue layer. Sounds crazy, but trust the madness.

Also, slicing was so much easier after you made those cake rounds nice and cold, wasn’t it? Carving cakes cold is always key.

When you’re ready to stack your cake, whip up a large batch of fluffy white vanilla buttercream. Keep it white – these are your white stripes.

The layers go as follows:

Red layer, buttercream.

Red layer, buttercream.

Red layer, buttercream.

Red layer, buttercream.

Blue layer with hollowed out middle, small red circle.

Buttercream, small red circle.

Crumb coat, place into the freezer for 10 minutes. Final coat, add sprinkles, and then swirl those buttercream swirls and buttercream decors right on top with that Wilton 1M tip.

And that’s it! Make sure to slice into it cold. Cold cakes make neater slices. 🙂

CLICK HERE FOR THE TV SEGMENT TUTORIAL 

Here’s a video tutorial I did with Good Things Utah highlighting how I stack and assemble this flag cake. Hope it helps and answers any questions you may have! Happy Fourth of July month, friends!