Patriotic 4th of July Cake
From mid June all the way through the end of July I try to incorporate as much red, white, and blue as possible into every aspect of our home and life. The 4th is one of my favorite holidays! For this girl with a background in cakes, this means a patriotic 4th of July cake is pretty much a givin.
One of the things I LOVE about this 4th of July cake is it’s easy! All you need are a few different frosting tips, some swirls of your wrist, and you can throw this together!
Easy Cake Hack:
Don’t have time to make a cake from scratch? That’s okay! I share this same tip in my Valentines Day Cake tutorial.
Tip: All you need to do to make the best flavored and textured cake is to use a boxed cake mix! You read that correctly. Make it exactly as stated with the regular eggs (not the egg white recipe) with one exception, add in a whole box of instant pudding mix in the same flavor as the cake. The pudding mix is the key to getting the consistency most people LOVE. Trust me.
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Greasing the cake pans for easy removal
Another tip I swear by is to coat the cake pans with butter, and then place a tablespoon of flour into the pan and swirl around until it sticks to all the butter. Discard remaining loose flour. This creates a barrier that helps your cake slip out of the pan. I also line the bottom of the cake pans with parchment paper. this is key to a smooth bottomed cake that lifts from the pan easily and is primed for frosting!
After removing from oven, let sit and cool for five minutes. Then using hot pads, tap sides of pan to loosen cake and flip onto cooling rack. Gently pull parchment off bottom of cake. Let cool completely before frosting, or pop in the freezer for a few hours to harden and make frosting easier!
Shop 4th of July cake items:
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Frosting the cake
Once you have your rounds baked and ready, it’s time to frost. You can’t skimp here, home made frosting is the way to go. It’s easy and the taste is beyond compare.
Classic Buttercream
Ingredients
- 1 cup butter
- 3 to 5 cups powdered sugar
- 1 Tbsp vanilla extract
- 1/4 tsp salt
- 4 Tbsp heavy cream
Instructions
- Mix room temperature butter until a whipped consistency. Slowly add 1 cup powdered sugar and mix to combine.
- Add in salt, vanilla, and heavy cream. Slowly mix in remainder of powdered sugar.
- Notice I leave a big margin for the amount of powdered sugar to use. This is because everyone tends to have a frosting consistency they prefer. I like mine a bit thicker, so I tend to add more. Some keep the crumb coat frosting thinner, and make the frosting used for decorating a little thicker. If you’re unsure, use around the 4 cup range.
After applying the crumb coat and then the final coat of frosting, fill three piping bags up with red, white, and blue frosting with different tips. You are going to start on the side of the cake and work half way around, tapering off slowly. Change up colors and go back and forth. Slowly start spacing them out more until you taper off.
You can’t do this cake wrong. Swirl where you feel like swirling and dot what you feel like dotting! Finish off with a colored chocolate drizzle around your cake or if your lazy like me, frost it and pretend it’s a drizzle. 😉 Add some firework looking popsicles on top just before serving and enjoy this festive cake for America’s birthday!
