Flag cake

I got the idea for this flag cake a few weeks ago. My inspiration came from here and here. I figured I would take the individually baked layer effect from Whisk Kid and the Vertical layers from I Am Baker, and combine it to make a flag! And of course, this morning I found out that I Am Baker already did it! I had no idea before I got the idea for this cake, I kind of thought it was unique! I just saw it online this morning. It was featured at I heart Naptime. Lol, figures. But I decided to make it anyway!

I used the white cake recipe from Epicurious, and made a 1 1/2 times the recipe. Here's the adjusted recipe:

3 cups of AP flour

3 tsp. Baking Powder

3/8 tsp. Salt

18 Tbsp. butter (2 1/4 sticks)

2 1/4 cups Sugar

3 tsp. Vanilla

9 egg whites

1 1/8 cups Milk

Make your cake according to the instructions (if you're using box mix, I would make 2 full boxes).

Take about 2 cups of cake mix and put it in a separate bowl. Dye it blue. This takes quite a bit of food coloring.

Dye the rest of the batter red. This takes a TON of food coloring. I used an entire tube of red gel color for this, and it still wasn't as red as I wanted it.

Mix white sprinkles into the blue batter. I used some of these.

Since I didn't have that many of the snow flakes, I mixed in some of these little white sprinkles, too. (Note: the sprinkles didn't seem to show like I wanted them to, but it's still worth a try, if you can find some you think might show through!)

Trace your cake pan onto parchment or wax paper 8 times, and cut out the circles. 

Take one of the circles and lay it in the bottom of your pan. Butter or spray your pan with pan spray. Put all of your blue batter into one cake pan.

Bake your blue batter for 20-25 minutes, or until a toothpick inserted comes out clean.

To flip the cake out of the pan:

While the cake is still hot, spray a piece of wax or parchment paper and stick it on top of the cake. 

Flop the cake upside down and place it on a flat surface to cool. Don't forget to peel off the parchment paper that was on the bottom!

Now take your red batter and divide it between 7 bowls that are all the same size. By doing this, you're ensuring that each red layer will be the same thickness.

Spoon the batter into your cake pans. I only had 2 round cake pans (8 inch), so I had to bake in 4 cycles. 

Once your layers are cool, start frosting. For the frosting, I used this recipe. I used a double batch.
Put one of your red layers down first, and spread a thick layer of frosting on it. Do this with 5-6 of your red layers.

Make a stencil with a scrap piece of paper. You want to make a blue ring of cake to go on the outside of the cake for the blue part of the flag. You want a decent sized rectangle of blue to be showing. Cut out your circle and place it on the blue cake to measure. If it's a good size, trace around the paper with a knife. Do the same with the remaining red layers.

Making sure that your cake has a thick layer of frosting on top, lay one of your smaller red layers on top, and top it with more frosting. Do this with the remaining red layers. 

Cut the blue ring in half so you can easily move it. Place it so that it fits snugly around the red layers. 

Do a crumb coat on the entire cake, and refrigerate for at least 30 minutes. Frost it however you want! I decided to leave mine pretty plain since the inside was so crazy. I didn't want too much going on with it.

If any of you try this cake, I'd LOVE to see it!

 My little helper was all tuckered out!