American Cake

I've been looking for reasons to practice making layered cakes, so the 4th of July was the perfect reason to give it another try... but with TWICE the layers as last time. That's right, kiddos... 4 layers yummy American in-your-face celebration. God bless the red, white & blue.



You'll Need:

• Cake & icing of your choice. No time for home-made this time, but don't let my short-cuts stop you from your favorite recipes from scratch. I used red velvet (one less food coloring) & white cake.


• Circle cookie-cutters in a variety of sizes. I got mine from Michael's.


• Red & Blue food coloring


• Round Pans


• Cake Leveler... best invention of all time.

I won't give you step-by-step directions, you all know how to bake a cake. And if you don't, please stop reading now because I'm no expert. I'm sure you can google someone with more insight... go ahead, I'll wait.

The basic gist is 2-fold: make layers with different colors & decorate with colorful rings. BAM! A non-obnoxious red, white & blue explosion. You could plan this just right & make a flag out of the layers, but I like the abstract look of it... it just feels fresher than the old flag made of berries, you know?

I do have 3 pieces of advice I can confidently share....



#1- Use the biggest of your round cookie-cutters to separate colored batter. Stick it in, pour your batters, & lift it straight out. By making this a circle, every piece the whole way around the cake will look the same.

#2- Freeze your layers overnight. It makes them SO much easier to work with & it didn't dry them out at all.

#3- Do a thin "crumb layer" of icing & then put it in the fridge for 20 minutes. It keeps it from crumbling everywhere & you get to kind of shellac your cake & any imperfections with icing. I got a nice, long icing spatula from Salvation Army for $0.49 & it was a wonderful tool to smooth it all out.

To Decorate - I tapped my spatula all over the fully-iced cake to make peeks. That also helps to hide imperfections since it's "supposed" to look messy. Then I took some of those smaller sized cookie-cutters, dipped them in a plate of food coloring, & stamped away at my icing. Tah-dah!