HCB: 4th of July Cake

I made a really cool cake the other day. It's called "Flag Cake."

See?

Not my original idea. Inspired Glory at Glorious Treats, who was inspired by Elissa at 17 and Baking. Noticed a trend here?

The cake looks complicated but it really isn't that hard. I love Glory's post because she does a photo tutorial, which makes it easier for me as I'm a visual learner.

I did something a little differently than her though. She used a box mix. I considered doing the same (it would totally cut my time) but I prefer homemade cakes. And I thought it would be totally cool to actually made everything from scratch.

And that' what I did!

And it is so fun!

I made 1 recipe of Rose's White Velvet Butter Cakes, in 2 7 inch pan. I weigh the batter and made sure to split it in equal quantity. I then color 1/2 of the batter blue (I used royal blue gel coloring from Americolor). Next, I made 2/3 recipe of Rose's Red Velvet Cake. Fill the 7 inch pan with the same amount of batter I fill the pan with White Velvet cake. Then pour the remaining into a 4 inch pan.

If you don't have a 4 inch pan, you can just made the whole recipe of Red Velvet Cake and bake it in 2 7 inch pan, then cut a 4 inch circle cake like how Glory did.

 
While the cake is baking, I made the Cream Cheese Frosting. I used the recipe that comes with the Red Velvet cake, but instead of white chocolate, I used Rose's alternative way of using the powdered sugar. I added only 1 1/2 cup of powdered sugar though, because it was sweet enough for me. I made 3x recipe of the frosting so I have enough to frost the cake.

Once the cakes all baked, split both the 7 inch Red Velvet and White Velvet into 2 layers. Also, split the 4 inch Red Velvet into 2 layers as well.

Next is composing.

First layer is the red velvet, followed by the white velvet. As you see I didn't put a whole lot of frosting in between.

Here's the 4 inch hole inside the Blue White Velvet. Note that I did not split this layer in half.

To the red and white velvet layers, add another layer of red velvet. Then top with the holed blue velvet. I spread some frosting inside the hole so the 4 inch cake layers can fit.

At this point we have 1 layer of white velvet left. Cut this one into a 4 inch cake as well. You can see the remaining cake in the photo below.

Put the 4 inch white velvet inside the hole, followed by the 4 inch red velvet.

Tada!

Isn't it cool? (Excuse the messy photo). By this time I was excited and tired at the same time.

Frosting the cake was proven to be challenging. Somehow my red velvet is really crumbly on the sides. It didn't develop the nice crust that the white velvet cakes did. And it turns out I didn't have enough frosting to do proper crumb coating so some red velvet cake crumbs got carried into the frosting, and they bleed, and then you have some pink streaks in places. I was not very happy but decided that this is an acceptable incident and the cake looks cute enough.

I also didn't have enough frosting to do the piping. Those are done by leftover buttercream. I had to add some shortening to the buttercream to make it as white as the cream cheese frosting. Oops!

The cake was a hit and it was delicious as well. Everyone raved about it and wanted to know how it's done.

Thank you Glory and Elisse for your posts and for your inspiration!