Happy 4th!

Happy 4th of July!  I hope everyone has fun plans for the long weekend!  We will be taking a trip to a coastal city here in Korea.  We've been apart for the past two years at this time so it will be nice to spend the holiday together :)

I love to bake, although I don't do it often enough!  Last year I spent the 4th of July with a good friend and her family and found the perfect cake to make for the party - a flag cake!  It's a round cake that looks unassuming covered with frosting before it's cut, but when you slice into it... ta-da!

This flag cake starts with 3 round cakes: one red, one white, and one blue.  I used boxed white cake mixes and added gel food coloring which creates more vibrant colors than the liquid food coloring.  The rest of the cake is simple assembly - cutting and pasting with a knife and frosting instead of scissors and glue :)

I saw this cake on a blog called 17 and Baking and found a video of the blog author demonstrating how to make the cake on a Seattle news website.  You can view the video HERE.  There is a link to the recipe/directions below the video.

It is time consuming but the end product is totally worth the effort!  There are a few things that I will change the next time I make this cake: 1) I will use ready-made icing instead of making my own  2) I will line the bottom and sides of the cake pans with parchment paper to avoid having to cut off a dark edging from each cake.

I'll be making this cake again next year when we're celebrating the 4th together in a new location :)

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"This nation will remain the land of the free

only so long as it is the home of the brave."

~Elmer Davis