Hidden Flag Cake

If you haven’t figured out yet, I love to be creative when I am making something for a Holiday! (In October you will get the total picture of this, since Halloween is my favorite holiday and I make some awesome creepy treats all month long!) Anyway, for the fourth of July this year, I had planned on making my traditional ‘Cheesecake with berries decorated as a flag’, but instead I seen This cake picture on the interwebs. I found a recipe at one point, and never could again! So I had to make up one myself, but it turned out awesome! I also made an awesome icing that I will be using again and again..

You Will Need:
(For the Cake)
-2 boxes white cake mix, mixed as said on box
-red food coloring
-blue food coloring
-white sprinkles (they don’t have to be stars, since they melt in the cake)
-white icing (I used a whipped cream one, so it wasn’t too sweet)
-assorted berries for decorating

(for the icing)
-2 8oz Cream cheese
-1 cup white sugar
-2 cups heavy whipping cream
-1/2 tablespoon Almond extract
-1 tablespoon Vanilla extract

First, Make up the icing so it has time to chill. This is made best with a very cold bowl, and beaters. So put them in the freezer for about thirty minutes before. Have the cream cheese at room temperature so it’s easy to cream, Start by mixing the cream cheese with the sugar until well blended, add in the extracts and mix those well, then add in the heavy whipping cream and beat until stiff peaks form but no longer. Put in the fridge until you need it. (This also makes an awesome fruit dip! It’s not sweet at all, and really creamy with just a hint of cream cheese) This is actually a double batch by the way, so if you want to use this as a dip or for a regular sized cake, just half the sugar, whipping cream, and cream cheese.

Okay, mix up one box of cake mix

and add about six to eight drops of Red food coloring. Mix well. Add more coloring if you need to.

Divide the cake mix between two round, greased and floured cake pans, bake them by the directions on the cake mix box.

Next, whip up the second cake mix, but before you add the food coloring, divide them into two separate bowls as even as you can, about 2 1/2 cups of batter each.. Make one bowl of batter red, with about four or five drops of red food coloring, and use four or five blue drops for the other bowl of batter. Again, adjust the color as needed, try and get the red as red as the first batch.

Next, add in the sprinkles into the blue batter only. (I bought flowers that looked like stars, but the lost their shape in the oven when they melted. So just go for old fashion white sprinkles.. I also didn’t have enough white in one bottle, so I used the yellow too, cooking is about improvising.)

again, bake the cakes as directed by the box.. Now is the fun part. After the cakes have come out of the oven, wait ten minutes to turn them out onto a plate or cooling wrack. Let them cool completely and then put them in the freezer for about an hour. This will make is easier to cut them so they don’t crumble a lot.

Once they are semi-frozen, take a knife and split the three red cakes into layers, just two. You can try and do more if you are adventurous of course, and make the layers look thinner.

Now, start layering as you cut, it makes it easier. Place a little icing on the plate so that the cake doesn’t slide, then start the layer. Cake, icing, cake, icing.. You get the point.. Save the last red cake, after you cut it.

Now this is the tricky part.. Take a sharp knife and cut as much as a perfect circle as you can into the blue cake. You should have at least a 2 inch edge of cake left over. Take the middle part of the circle and set it on top of the last red cake, now use the blue cake as a guide to cute a hole into the last red one. Remove the middle of the red cake, and place the blue inside. That will be the top of your cake.

Remember to put some icing in the layers between the red ring around the blue circle. Finish stacking the cake and putting the icing in between the layers. It’s okay to be a little messy at this point.

Then Ice the whole cake.

Add some berries and red and blue sprinkles and you have a very cute cake!

And when you cut it open, you have.. This!

And each slice looks like it’s own little flag! This cake was a little complicated to make, just because of the cutting, but it was worth it when people ate it! And it made the 4th a little more fun.

Enjoy!!

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