Monday, May 25, 2009

Happy Memorial Day!

I was making a cake for a Memorial Day Picnic that I was going to today and in coming up with an idea... of course I thought of... An American Flag Cake!

The cake is an 11 x 15 cake, 1/2 yellow and 1/2 devils food. Baked in the same pan at the same time... Super easy using these instructions and pictures found on Into The Oven (If you want to view the pictures, you'll probably need to create a log-in...)

Anyway, I once again frosted the cake with Bakerella's Easy Buttercream (see my previous post for a link). I used Royal Blue and a smidge of Black to get the blue color and for the red, I used a combination of Red Red, No Taste Red and Christmas Red (pretty equal amounts of the three).

I used the following tips: lines between the stripes and around the cake - tip #3, stripes and blue field - tip #47 (then I smoothed it with a spatula), stars for flag - tip #16, top border - tip #17, and bottom border - tip #21

First I frosted the cake in white buttercream. Next, I put the cake in the fridge to set up a little while I figured out the dimensions for everything. (I used tip #47 since it was approximately 3/8. I used two swipes of tip #47 to make each strip, approx 6/8. The thirteen stripes ending up being 78/8 (6/8 x 13). The entire cake was 88/8 (8/8 x 11). So there was 10/8 leftover (88/8 - 78/8). I left half (5/8) of the leftover 10/8 on the top and half (5/8) on the bottom. Next, I had to figure out how big to make the blue square. On the real flag, the blue square is as long as the top 7 stripes on the flag... so I measured the top 7 stripes... 5 1/2 inches. So the blue needed to be a 5 1/2 inch square. (Hope that made sense!)

Once I figured out all the dimensions, I took the cake back out of the fridge and marked my lines on the cake. I measured using a ruler and then used the ruler on edge to put marks on the cake. First the outside square... then the bottom stripes... then the square for the blue... then the top stripes. Finally I was ready to decorate!



First, I outlined the inside of the square with blue (only the two sides that touch the stripes...) and then filled in the blue square. Next, I outlined with red for the strips (once again only the inside lines... not the very outside....) Then I piped the red stripes and smoothed them... then the white stripes... then I piped around the entire flage with blue to give it a nice outline. Finally, I put on the stars, first on the blue field (just like the real flag, 50 stars, nine rows, alternating 6 and 5 stars in each row!), then the top star border and finally the bottom star border. I'm pretty proud with how the cake turned out! And it was pretty yummy too!