Red, White & Blue Flag Cake

By carvalhohm

Ingredients

• 3 cups + 6 tablespoons cake flour
• 1 1/2 tablespoons baking powder
• 3/4 teaspoon salt
• 2 cups (scant) whole milk or buttermilk (make it by combining 2 tbsp lemon juice with two scant cup of whole milk for five minutes)
• 6 large egg whites
• 1 1/2 cup sugar
• 1 tablespoon grated lemon zest
• 1 1/2 stick (12 tablespoons) unsalted butter, at room temperature
• 3/4 teaspoon pure lemon extract
• Gel or powder food coloring

Details

Adapted from king5.com

Preparation

Step 1

Preheat oven to 350 degrees and put rack in middle or upper third of oven. Butter three 8″(or 9”) x 2″ pans and line with buttered parchment paper.

Sift together flour, baking powder, and salt. In another bowl, whisk together egg whites and buttermilk.

Cream butter, zest, and sugar in mixer on medium speed for full 3 minutes until very light and fluffy. Beat in lemon extract, then add 1/3 of flour mixture, still on medium speed.

Beat in half of egg-buttermilk mixture, then half of remaining flour mixture, then last of egg-buttermilk mixture, and finally last of flour, beating until batter is smooth. Beat entire batter on medium high for two minutes until completely smooth and mixed.
To make cake, you use three layers of white batter. Using food coloring, one layer is dyed blue, one is dyed red, and last layer is kept white. Divide batter in three equal parts (it’s about 9 cups total batter.). Pour one color of batter into one of 3 prepared pans, smoothing tops with spatula. Bake 25-30 minutes, rotating halfway through, or until thin knife inserted in middle comes out clean. Cool in the pans five minutes, then turn out onto a cooling rack.

Three layers are leveled so they are all the same height. Let’s say each layer is 2 inches tall.

Using serrated knife or cake leveler, slice red and white layers horizontally in half. So you have blue layer (2″thick ), two red layers (each 1″ thick ), and two white layers (each 1″thick). Set one white and one red layer aside, those will be bottom two stripes of flag.
Stack blue layer, white layer, and red layer on top of each other. Using serrated knife, cut large circle through all three layers. I used bowl as guide. Now you have ring of blue (2″thick), ring of white (1″ thick), ring of red (1″ thick), and three inner circles in each color (blue is 2″ and other two are both 1″). Set aside inner circle of blue and the outer rings of red and white and use for a festive trifle or just eat it while still in kitchen.

To assemble cake, frost bottom two layers together – set uncut white layer on plate and spread it with frosting. Top with uncut red layer. Spread uncut red layer with frosting, then set blue ring on top. Use spatula to spread very, very thin layer of frosting around inside edge of blue ring. This will help keep blue layer and two top stripes together.

Place white inner circle on top of uncut red layer, inside ring of blue. Frost, and top with red inner circle. Frost entire cake and voila, it’s a flag cake!

*Cream Cheese Frosting:*
Makes enough to frost and fill this cake

16 oz cream cheese
10 tbsp unsalted butter, softened
4 tsp vanilla extract
4 cups powdered sugar, sifted
Beat cream cheese, butter, and extract together until combined. Gradually beat in powdered sugar until desired consistency is reached.