Happy 4th of July!!!

I am so excited to be home in the US for 4th of July this year.  I haven't been here for our independence day since 2008!  Wow!  I'm super stoked for some awesome fireworks action, woo!

To celebrate the fourth, we are getting together with some friends and having a bbq... woo!  And our contribution is the cause of my current blog... the American flag cake!

As you have probably figured out, I am in love with pinterest for gathering ideas about cakes and decorating them.  A few weeks back I found a cake idea that had the American flag INSIDE the cake.  Whatttttt?!?!  COOL!  I had to do it... and what better reason than a 4th of July BBQ celebration???? :)

Knowing that these same peeps are probably starting to get sick of my cakes (if that is even possible jaja) I decided to make a tiny cake (6" round).  To make this American flag cake, I first had to make THREE cakes - a red one, a white one, and a blue one!  White - easy - white cake.  Red - easy - red velvet.  Blue - kinda easy - rest of the white cake with blue coloring gel.  Since I was making tiny cakes, I got the white and blue cakes out of the same batter, and the red cake along with 14 cupcakes out of the other batter.  Here they are, cooling:



Once they cooled, I had to level them and split them.  The red cake had to be split into 3, the white 2 and the blue, just one... but I needed to make it a bit smaller otherwise there would be too much blue cake! 

Next, I used a glass to make a small circle cutout in the blue cake.  Using the same glass, I cut a smaller circle out of one of the white cake layers and one of the red cake layers.  Below you can see most of the pieces, ready to be assembled!

The time had now arrived to put the cake together.  I started by placing one of the red layers on my cake circle, and putting a thin layer of frosting on it.  On top of that, I added my first layer white cake, followed by a thin layer of frosting and the second red layer and a thin layer of frosting.  Next, I placed the blue ring on top.  Then, the small white circle of cake went in.

Followed by a thin layer of frosting and then the small red circle.  The finished cake looked like this:

As with all my cakes, the next step was to crumb coat.  This I found to be particularly important when dealing with colored cakes!

I then frosted the cake and while it was setting, I started making the frosting roses.  I ended up making 8 red and 8 blue.  Here are my first 4:

Once I finished the roses, I let them sit in the fridge for a bit while I started to decorate the cake.  Here the cake is, frosted, bordered, and written on! :)  (The frosting job is a bit rough, but I tried an idea from my cake decorating book and another one from pinterest to make it smooth, and it didn't... it screwed it up!  I was annoyed, but no more trying that!!!)

After everything was set, the roses had to be placed onto the cake.  Using my special "flower" scissors, I carefully picked up each flower and placed it onto the edge of the cake.  I ended up only using 14 and having 2 frosting roses leftover.  I then added some squiggles (firework-esque!  ;) ) and green leaves, along with some randomly placed red and blue stars on the side of the cake.  Below is the finished product!

The cake is currently hanging out in the refri waiting to be transported to the BBQ.  I can't wait to see how the cake looks on the inside!!!!  And don't you fret, there will most certainly be inside pics posted, regardless of the outcome ;) 

Happy 4th of July!!!!! :-D