Today I am showing you how to make an American Flag Hat Cake! This 4th of July celebration cake has blue and red stars hiding on the inside- a surprise your Independence Day party guests will love!
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For the first time ever (I think) we will be in America for the 4th of July! We have been down in Los Angeles for around a week, and set up for another one. We started out in Anaheim attending VidCon for another year, and then after it was over we got in the car and headed over to an Air BnB in Venice. Venice is a really eclectic place, and our first night here we went over to Venice Beach and saw some amazing people and things . . . and the Pacific ocean. It was cloudy so it didn’t make for the best picture, but still, we were there.
Making this American flag hat cake is pretty similar to my other surprise inside ideas for cakes. I was having deja vu while cutting the stars out, and realized it was because I had just done a surprise star inside cake for a Wonder Woman cake that is up on the Awestuck YouTube channel. The key to baking these types of cakes (and I’ve said it a million times) is to make sure that the prebaked cake is completely covered in raw batter before baking it for the second time. That way the cake is insulated completely and won’t dry out.
You can use fondant or buttercream for decorating a cake like this. Buttercream can give you the same effect as fondant if you apply it correctly. Using a hot knife to smooth your icing is the best trick I have learned along the way in cake decorating. I like to show you guys tutorials on how to do things the easy way from home. That’s the way I do it- not professionally trained, just self taught in my kitchen. You can learn a lot teaching yourself.
I’ve got a number of other YouTube tutorials for the Forth of July up on Cupcakes and Cardio for you to enjoy so check those out too for more ideas!
American Themed Treats Playlist:
How to Make an American Flag Cake
Ingredients
- 12 cups vanilla cake batter
- 3 x 8″ vanilla cake swirled red and blue
- White, red and blue vanilla buttercream
- Star sprinkles
- Star cookie cutter
Procedure:
- Preheat oven to 350F. Grease and prepare three 8″ round baking pans
- Place 1 cup cake batter into the bottom of each of the three pans.
- Cut a wedge of cake out of the baked swirled cakes and cut out a star shape using the star cutter.
- Place the cut star piece of cake into the raw cake batter in one of the pans. Repeat the cutting and arrangement of the stars into the cake batter until there is a complete ring of stars. Be careful not to put the stars too close to the edge of the pan as the cake needs to be carved and trimmed once baked.
- Repeat steps 2-3 for the second and third 8″ cake pans.
- For ease, fill piping bags with cake batter to cover the stars. Add additional cake batter to the outside, and inside ring on the cake, ensuring that the prebaked cake pieces are covered completely with batter (this will keep them from drying out while baking).
- Bake cakes in a preheated oven for 60-70 minutes. Allow to cool completely on a rack.
- Level off what you can from the top of the cooled cakes, being careful not to cut into the stars.
- Attach first cake layer to a cake board and attach it with a swipe of buttercream. Cover the top of the layer in white buttercream and stack the second one on top. Cover the second cake layer in white buttercream, and stack the third layer on top. Freeze the stacked cake for 1-2 hours to make carving the cake a bit easier.
- To carve the shape of the hat, start at the top, and work on an angle down and in, towards the center of the cake only about an inch. Don’t go so far as to hit the stars in the cake.
- Make sure that your cake is even and tapered equally around the whole cake.
- Cover the top of the cake in red buttercream, smoothing with an offset spatula, right to the edges.
- Cover the sides of the cake in a thin layer of white buttercream for a crumb coat. Place cake in the freezer for 10-15 to seal the crumb coat. Cover again in white buttercream.
- Using a ruler and a toothpick, mark the sides of the cake with stripes. Mark an area 1″ in thickness around the bottom of the cake. Fill in every second stripe with red buttercream and the strip around the bottom with blue buttercream.
- Place star sprinkles in the blue buttercream ribbon, in between the red stripes.
- Create a brim using red buttercream, and flatten with an offset spatula.
- Slice and serve when desired. Cake is best consumed within 2-3 days, and should be kept in a sealed container in the fridge.
