July 4th Cake

Making a 4th of July cake is a small way to show your patriotism. I have the best memory of a fourth of July celebration. My family was in Florida and we had day tickets for Legoland. During the day we had fun enjoying the rides, the show and seeing all the sights. Then in the evening we were able to see the greatest fireworks display. We were all wearing 3D glasses and the end of all the strands was a lego piece in different colors. It was super memorable. Every independence day should be memorable. Sometimes it is a large event like the fireworks display and sometimes it is the best patriotic cake.

This is a fantastic cake for the patriot at heart. This year for Independence Day, I made a star cake with the flag symbolism for the design. Although it looks great it was a bit of a challenge to get all the lines straight, so I thought I would share some of what I learned while making this patriotic cake.

How to Make the Ultimate July 4th Cake

I used a star shaped cake pan and baked a regular yellow cake. On the plain bottomed shaped cake pans I always line them with parchment paper or wax paper. A drop of spray on the bottom will hold the paper in place. Then make sure you adequately spray the sides. After baking the cake, I let the cake cool for about 10 minutes. At this point the side will have separated from the sides and then I pop the cake out of the pan. Just let it naturally fall out and then place it onto a cooling rack. Once the cake is cooled I placed it into my fridge for a couple of hours, making it really cold. Then, I brushed off any loose crumbs. Cut the bottom of the cake, so the cake is nice and level. I use a leveler usually to keep it consistent. If you have a steady hand you could cut it by yourself, but I’m sure I would be crooked if I tried that. I placed the cake onto a star shaped serving bottom and re-brushed the cake to help prepare it for the icing process. Now I was ready to ice the July 4th cake.

First, I iced the sides with white vanilla icing. I love to use my angled cake spatula. I have a straight one and an angled one, but I prefer the angled one. I piped the icing on the cake and then with a spatula I smoothed the icing. This way it looked nice and had a uniform look to the icing consistency. The top was the tricky part. The whole top of the cake was iced using the star tip #16. I started with the blue color. My hint was to line up the cake so I was always making a straight line towards me. I place the cake on my cake spinner which really helps to position the cake in an easy way to add the stars. I use the cake spinner with all the cakes that I decorate.

If I were to make this cake again I would probably make a straight line with a #3 icing tip and then follow with the stars. So, I first lined with the blue stars (royal blue dye) and then I filled in all the blue triangles. Next, I rotated with the red and white stripes. I made lines of the stars, so they would be the same width. I made 3 rows of red (mixed red and burgundy dye) and then three rows of white and continued this pattern. Finally I used a large star (#47) to make the white stars on the top of the blue.

I was impressed with how this cake turned out. It was a fantastic way to combine a patriotic cake, with a flag cake, and a star cake. What a great way to celebrate with this creation of an American cake for our July 4th party.

Beside this cake I had a platter of fruit. I had the fruit cut into stars and stripes. The stars are cut using cookie cutters. Also on a white square platter I had cake pops. The cake pops were dipped in blue and red candy melts. On the blue ones I sprinkled sprinkles on the top and on the red ones I were swiggled with white chocolate. I arranged them so all the blue ones were grouped like a small rectangle and the red one created a large rectangle. It goes together to look like a large flag.

Best of luck with your July 4th cake and patriotic party. We would love to hear all about it and see your pictures of your celebration.