Patriotic Cake
This Patriotic Cake is full of fun, it’s a white cake, with frosting colored red, white, and blue… then the cake is frosted and swiped so it’s easy to replicate and make in your own kitchen.
Lots of funny things can happen in a week.
Some of the funny ha, ha…
some not so much.
Things don’t always turn out like I plan, this cake is one…more on that in a minute.
I did think that when my husband asked me to glue his shoes this week, he was just adding on more wifely duties to my already LONG list. I took one look at them and the soles had completely pulled apart from the shoes, I pretty much thought no glue we have will do this and not in the time he needed them, so I did the next best thing and called all the neighbors to borrow shoes. See, it is funny.
Needless to say it was shoe week at our house, I needed new running shoes, so did my husband, he wanted new hiking shoes and we had already set out a day that we would travel to a store, not so close by to get the needed foot attire along with custom innersole, WOW those things really save my feet, I kid you not. So added to our trip was now a pair of black shoes for him and the day before I bought a pair of sandals and well since I have finicky feet I tried a new pair of sandals…hope they work, the pair I INVESTED in last year was not as perfect as I had hoped, they are ok, but not perfect for every day. I think in my next life I will design shoes. For some reason the shoe designers think woman’s toes should squished together and that we don’t need arch support. I have another opinion.
So we will be eating this cake for breakfast, lunch, and dinner because our grocery budget was blown on shoes… oh I do have a 10 pound of potatoes….guess I’ll get working on something with those!
Have you ever bit into a piece of cake and it reminds you of the best wedding cake you have ever had. Well, this is that cake. I kid you not, I think I had a piece of cake that tasted the same as this at a wedding over 20 years ago and will never forget the taste. It was perfectly delicious.
spread the frosting evenly in between the layers of cake
and place another layer of cake and try to keep the layers smooth and even.
smooth white icing over the cake and don’t fuss too much, it will all be covered up remember.
KEEP SCROLLING for photos on how to decorate the cake
Patriotic Cake
Ingredients
White Cake
- 2 1/4 cups cake flour
- 1 cup whole milk at room temperature
- 6 extra-large egg whites
- 1 1/2 teaspoons vanilla extract
- 1 3/4 cups granulated sugar
- 4 teaspoons baking powder
- 1 teaspoon salt
- 12 tablespoons unsalted butter softened but not melted (cut into 1 tablespoon size pieces)
White Frosting
- 1 1/2 cup butter
- 5 tablespoons heavy whipping cream
- 8 cups powdered sugar add more if needed
- 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
Instructions
- Heat oven to 350 degrees.
- Prepare 2- 8" cake pans with parchment paper on the bottom and spraying baking spray (I use Bak-Klene) on the paper and around sides.
- Make sure items that mention they need to be at room temperature are. If not the cake will typically come out dry, dense, and not give you the proper result.
- Mix milk, egg whites, vanilla in a small bowl with a fork.
- In mixer bowl, add flour, sugar, baking powder, and salt. Mix on low.
- Add butter 1 tablespoon at a time, beating on low speed until incorporated.
- Add 1/2 of the milk and egg mixture and beat on medium for 1-2 minutes. Add remaining milk mixture and beat for another minute.
- Pour batter into 2 cake pans.
- Bake until a toothpick comes out clean about 30 minutes.
- Allow cakes to cool before removing them from pans.
- I wrap my cakes in plastic wrap and refrigerate them, they are easy to handle and fill without the worry of them falling apart. Often overnight.
frosting
- Beat butter, heavy cream, sugar, and vanilla until smooth and creamy.
- Tint 1 cup frosting red, 1 cup frosting blue (I use Americolor red-red and navy blue)
- Slice each cake in half so it's about an inch thick.
- Place 3/4 cup blue frosting onto bottom layer,
- then add the next layer of cake, then add 3/4 cup white frosting, then a layer of cake and a 3/4 cup red frosting then the final layer of cake and crumb coat the cake with about 1/2 cup frosting.
- Place cake in the refrigerator for 15 minutes so the crumb coat has a chance to firm up.
- Then coat the outside of the cake with white frosting.
- In sandwich bags, place the remaining 1/4 cup of red frosting in one bag, and the blue in another bag, but a small hole and pipe onto cake.
- I created a swirled effect on top and stripes down the sides of the cake.
- Next, take a spatula and gently scrape off some of the frosting so the cake has an airbrushed, tie-dye effect.
- Add festive sprinkles on the edge and serve.
Notes
this is where the funny story comes in, I thought I’d make swirls on the cake, but I kept getting blogs of icing and well, lets just say a few choice words later, I decided to scrape the icing off….
and I hoped this oh so PRECISE scraping would work….it did and I think the cake tured out better than I could have imagined. Gently scrape the colors in long sweeping strokes to have the colors glide across the cake. It will end up with an airbrushed, tie dye effect. Looks like a fire cracker of a cake if you ask me!
Happy, Happy I am that this cake not only looks fun but was so delicious.
Super gorgeous! I love the red and blue!
So nice when something turns out better than expected! I love the piece of cake cut so “cleanly”! Before my husband and kids hiked Mt. Whitney I had to glue gun the soles of his boots too:)
Yeah, I always hold my breath on the first slice. I ended up taking his shoes to the shoe repair and they told me, the glue was so oily, nothing they had would even help get him get by a day. I just laughed 🙂
Gorgeous! Absolutely love this cake, Diane!
Looks delish! I have to ask…3 cups of butter?!
I miss wrote it, sorry it’s a stick and a half I much have been thinking 1 1/2 pounds originally and then converted it to cups. I just adjusted it, thanks for catching it! so 12 Tablespoon or a stick and a half is the correct amount of butter.
What a gorgeous looking cake!!! It’s perfect for this week!!!
Diane,
This cake is seriously gorgeous! I am going to make it for the block party and I’ll need all your good vibes to come out victorious! I’ll let you know how it went:) Thanks! XOXO
Gorgeous! I LOVE it!
This cake is stunning! When I saw the top photo I immediately wanted to know if the “air brush” frosting needed a special tool! You really could have told everyone that you worked for hours to come up with this technique and we all would have believed you! (Delicious too is a bonus. 🙂 )
Your cake lookg lovely, good serendippity here!!!
Well I’ve heard of borrowing sugar from the neighbors but never shoes! 😀
Shoe week! And cake for breakfast…consider me in! Oh and the scraped off icing looks gorgeous, you so should have pretended you meant to do this.
I love the tie-dyed look that it came out with.
Wow, that awesome icing effect was a happy accident! Now I bet the rest of us will be desperately trying to recreate the effect purposely with inferior results. You know, like when you’re cleaning the house and just pile your hair up on your head, then look in the mirror and think ‘wow, that’s really cute,’ but can never for the life of you re-create it later…
This is really wonderful. Have a great Independence Day celebration 🙂
P.S. Accidents like this icing one…gotta love them.
Oh wow, this cake is gorgeous! It looks so delicious 🙂
Diane, this cake is simply AMAZING! Truly! 😀 Happy 4th!
Would you mind clarifying sugar quantity please? This is our first 4th July in the US and we’ve been invited to friends. I’d love to impress them!
Hi, the sugar amount is one and 3/4 cups of sugar. I missed writing cups but now adjusted it.
Happy Baking!
Wow! This cake is so beautiful Diane! I love the frosting!
Ha! Ha! It sure does sound like it was a shoe-apolooza in your house. Which reminds me that I need to break in my hiking shoes before I head off to Utah in 2 weeks (i tore my beloved pair on rocks in Patagonia and thankfully remembered that I better high tail it to the store and replace them. . .a not the day before the trip).
But enough about shoe-sies.. .because I want to talk about this showstopper of a cake. It is so beautiful. I wanted to make a Fourth of July cake with this scraped look myself. . .but with Fourth of July nipping at my heals. . .well. . .I just don’t think that is in the cards for me. Instead I will stare at and admire yours.
This cake is so beautiful! I love it.
The cream cake looks delicious and very appealing. I will learn how to make such a delicious cake.