American Flag Cake

Last weekend was the 4th of July, so we had some friends over for a BBQ potluck and Charisse prepared a nice cake, with a colorful surprise! The idea of a red white and blue cake is something Eric's sister Elaine discovered around memorial day, and Charisse applied her own cake recipe to produce this patriotic dessert. We tried to snap as many pictures as we could, but believe you me, this cake vanished faster than anyone could say "Mmmm, let me have another slice". Let us know what you think and hit the break for pictures and recipe!

American Flag Cake
What You Will Need

3 cups flour
4 teaspoons baking powder
1/2 teaspoon salt
2 sticks unsalted butter, room temperature
2 1/3 cups sugar
5 large egg whites, room temperature
2 teaspoons vanilla
1 1/2 cups milk, room temperature
red gel food coloring
navy blue gel food coloring

Cream Cheese Frosting
What you will need

2 sticks of butter
16 ounces of cream cheese
4-6 cups of powered sugar
2 tsp vanilla

Preheat oven to 350*

In a large bowl cream together the butter and the sugar until well combined.  Slowly add the egg whites one by one until incorporated.  Mix in the vanilla.

In a separate bowl mix all the dry ingredients together.  Alternate mixing in a bit of the dry ingredients in the batter with some milk until all of the dry and wet ingredients are combined.  

Using 3 bowls, divide the batter into equal amounts.  In one bowl, add enough blue food coloring gel until you get the desired color.  Do the same to make one bowl of red batter.  You will end up with one blue bowl, one red bowl, and one with no coloring.  

Spray two 8 inch cake pans with non stick spray.  Divide each bowl into two cakes for a total of six cakes altogether.  Cakes will be extremely thin so they should only bake for about 15 minutes each.  Work in batches.

Let cakes cool, invert and cool completely on a cooling rack.  

To make the cream cheese frosting, whip together the butter and cream cheese, add vanilla and start mixing in powered sugar until you get the consistency you want.  

To start frosting, add about 1 cup per layer, let some of the frosting hang over the edge of each layer, add another layer of cake alternating colors. 

Cover the sides and top of the cake with a thin layer of icing, working quickly.  This is called the crumb layer.  Refrigerate the cake until frosting is set.  Finish icing and serve