Do you know what you're making for the 4th of July? I do! Gotta love Elissa Berstein and her blog 17 and Baking. She just graduated from high school in the area and has an award winning blog with some pretty impressive recipes and ideas. I like this gal!
Today she was on New Day Northwest, that daytime show on King 5 with the theme song that always gets stuck in my head (not a good thing). She showed how to create a patriotic cake that is so simple I just can't stand it! Yes, I understand some of you classify my 'simple' as not being your kind of 'simple', but in all things baking - this is dang simple for the end product. (Below is a screen shot I took from the show of finished cake)
You can create this cute cake with cake mix to save a lot of time. Two boxes of any white cake mix is what you'll need (each box makes two layers). Though you will end up with an extra cake layer as her recipe calls for three layers. You'll just have an extra layer to snack on!
But, I think I'll be using all 4 layers to make my cake. Why you ask? Because if I want to be truely patriotic and serve a flag cake I'm going to be overly anal and put a red layer on the top and bottom of cake, just like our flag (the recipe has a white layer on the bottom and red as top layer).
Like I said, overly anal. But, I can hear my grandma getting all giddy about seeing this recipe on TV and making it right now (and she would do the same thing with putting red layer on top and bottom...). And, calling me and telling me all about it. She would loooove this cake.
You can visit the New Day Northwest website and watch a video on how to make the cake. Elissa does a great job explaining every step. Enjoy!
The below recipe is pretty long and I haven't read through or edited, and have not baked this cake yet. Or, you can use two boxes of cake mix and follow directions on box for 8" or 9" round cakes. There is a recipe for cream cheese frosting at very bottom. I do highly recommend you make your own frosting. It doesn't take much effort and the end result is SO much better than the store bought stuff...
Red, White & Blue Cake Recipe, courtesy of 17 and Baking by Elissa Bernstein
Makes 3 - 8” (or 9”) rounds
3 cups + 6 tablespoons cake flour
1 ½ tablespoons baking powder
3/4 teaspoon salt
2 cups (scant) whole milk or buttermilk
6 large egg whites
1 ½ cup sugar
1 tablespoon grated lemon zest
1 ½ stick (12 tablespoons) unsalted butter, at room temperature
¾ teaspoon pure lemon extract
Gel or powder food coloring
*If you don’t have buttermilk, make it by combining 2 tbsp lemon juice with two scant cup of whole milk for five minutes. Finally you want really soft butter, with the texture of mayonnaise.
Preheat the oven to 350 degrees and put a rack in the middle or upper third of the oven. Butter three 8″ (or 9”) x 2″ pans and line with buttered parchment paper.
Sift together the flour, baking powder, and salt. In another bowl, whisk together the egg whites and buttermilk.
Cream the butter, zest, and sugar in a mixer on medium speed for a full 3 minutes until very light and fluffy. Beat in the lemon extract, then add 1/3 of the flour mixture, still on medium speed.
Beat in half of the egg-buttermilk mixture, then half of the remaining flour mixture, then the last of the egg-buttermilk mixture, and finally the last of the flour, beating until the batter is smooth. Beat the entire batter on medium high for two minutes until completely smooth and mixed.
To make the cake, you use three layers of the white batter. Using food coloring, one layer is dyed blue, one is dyed red, and the last layer is kept white. Divide the batter in three equal parts (it’s about 9 cups total batter.). Pour one color of batter into one of the 3 prepared pans, smoothing the tops with a spatula. Bake 25-30 minutes, rotating halfway through, or until a thin knife inserted in the middle comes out clean. Cool in the pans five minutes, then turn out onto a cooling rack.
The three layers are leveled so they are all the same height. Let’s say each layer is 2 inches tall.
Using a serrated knife or cake leveler, slice the red and white layers horizontally in half. So you have a blue layer (2″thick ), two red layers (each 1″ thick ), and two white layers (each 1″thick). Set one white and one red layer aside, those will be the bottom two stripes of the flag.
Stack the blue layer, white layer, and red layer on top of each other. Using a serrated knife, cut a large circle through all three layers. I used a bowl as a guide. Now you have a ring of blue (2″thick), a ring of white (1″ thick), a ring of red (1″ thick), and three inner circles in each color (the blue is 2″ and the other two are both 1″). Set aside the inner circle of blue and the outer rings of red and white and use for a festive trifle or just eat it while still in the kitchen.
To assemble the cake, frost the bottom two layers together – set the uncut white layer on a plate and spread it with frosting. Top with the uncut red layer. Spread the uncut red layer with frosting, then set the blue ring on top. Use a spatula to spread a very, very thin layer of frosting around the inside edge of the blue ring. This will help keep the blue layer and the two top stripes together.
Place the white inner circle on top of the uncut red layer, inside the ring of blue. Frost, and top with the red inner circle. Frost the entire cake and voila, it’s a flag cake!
Cream Cheese Frosting, courtesy of The Joy of Cooking
Makes enough to frost and fill this cake
16 oz cream cheese
10 tbsp unsalted butter, softened
4 tsp vanilla extract
4 cups powdered sugar, sifted
Beat the cream cheese, butter, and extract together until combined. Gradually beat in the powdered sugar until the desired consistency is reached.
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