Patriotic Flag Cake

Growing up for the fourth of July, my grandmother always made patriotic flag cakes with me. I decided this year I wanted to make one but I added my own twist.

I decided to make the inside red, white, and blue using red (and blue!) velvet cake with vanilla bean cream cheese frosting between the layers.

This recipe is originally from Paula Deen. I made it a few years ago as cupcakes. Now I just assumed that the recipe could be converted into cake by cooking it longer. I could be wrong. My cakes came out pretty dense. I'm not sure why. My grocery store only had low fat sour cream and buttermilk but I can't imagine that making a huge difference. Here is the recipe I followed:

Red/Blue Velvet Cake Ingredients:
-1 cup butter, softened
-2 cups sugar
-1 tablespoon vanilla extract
-3 large eggs
-1 teaspoon distilled white vinegar
-2 cups all-purpose flour
-1/2 cup unsweetened cocoa powder
-1/2 teaspoon baking soda
-1/2 teaspoon salt
-1/2 cup buttermilk
-1/2 cup sour cream
-one 1oz bottle red or blue food coloring

The above is the recipe for one cake. Double for a two layer cake and you'll also need:
-blueberries
-strawberries

1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees F.

2. In a large bowl, beat butter, sugar, and vanilla at medium speed with a mixer until fluffy. Add eggs, one at a time, beating well after each addition. Beat in vinegar.

3. In a medium bowl, combine flour, cocoa, baking soda, and salt.

4. Add to butter mixture alternately with buttermilk, beginning and ending with flour mixture, beating just until combined after each addition.

 5. Stir in sour cream and food coloring. Pour into greased 9x13 baking pan.

6. Bake for about 35 minutes or until a knife inserted in center comes out clean. Cool in pans for 10 minutes. Remove from pan and cool completely on wire racks.

7. Repeat with the above recipe but use blue food coloring instead of red.

I will let you all know how I definitely messed up. I thought the food coloring bottles I bought were 1 ounce each but it turned out they were .25 ounces each and all four colors were 1 ounce together. I hadn't noticed with the red food coloring but when I mixed the blue in, it turned out like this.

Yucky green gray! I went to the grocery store to look for a 1 ounce bottle but of course they only had them in red and green so I just bought another .25 one. It still wasn't blue. More teal. But I was okay with that.

Here's how it came out baked.

Vanilla Bean-Cream Cheese Frosting Ingredients:
-3/4 cup butter, softened
-one 8 oz package cream cheese, softened
-1 tablespoon vanilla extract
-1 vanilla bean, split and scraped, seeds reserved
-5 cups confectioners' sugar (note: Paula called for 7 cups but that seemed like so much to me and it was already very sweet)

1. Split your vanilla bean and scrape out the seeds.

2. In a large bowl, beat butter, cream cheese, vanilla extract, and vanilla bean seeds at medium speed with a mixer until creamy. Gradually add confectioner's sugar, beating until smooth.

3. Place red cake on serving platter (I used a baking sheet since I didn't have anything large enough). Cover top in icing.

4. Place blue cake on top of that. Coat the sides in icing and then the top. Go back around with any extra icing you have. In a rectangle in the top left, place your blueberries. Then create stripes with your strawberries (mine are quartered).

I made mine just in time for Flag Day!

Enjoy! Please let me know if you have advice converting a cupcake recipe into a cake recipe and if I did something terribly wrong!

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