America's Birthday Cake

Despite not planning a big bash for the 4th of July, I really wanted to try to bake this red, white, and blue cake.  Unfortunately, it didn't turn out too well, starting when the three cakes went in the oven, and we had to change our plans.

It was supposed to look like this cake from 17 and Baking, but our cakes didn't want to come out of the pan very well, so we didn't even want to try to slice the layers in any direction!  Also, just after the cakes went in the oven, Cady was cleaning up, and accidentally turned off the oven.  It took time and a half to bake the cakes, but they turned out really moist and really fluffy.  Another issue were the recipes we used.  The white cake recipe we used to make the cake turned out a little too yellow than one would hope for a red, white, and blue cake, probably due to the fact that it used the whole egg, not just the whites.  And we used the coconut frosting recipe from this post, which isn't hard enough or thick enough to use to assemble a layer cake.  It could probably be changed a little, but we didn't make any changes.

But now that we've gotten all of the negatives out of the way, here is our recipe.

Simple White Cake:

• 1 cup sugar
• 1/2 cup butter
• 2 eggs
• 2 teaspoons vanilla extract
• 1 1/2 cup all-purpose flour
• 1 3/4 teaspoons baking powder
• 1/2 cup milk

Preheat oven to 350 degrees F (175 degrees C). Grease and flour a 9x9 inch pan or line a muffin pan with paper liners.

In a medium bowl, cream together the sugar and butter. Beat in the eggs, one at a time, then stir in the vanilla. Combine flour and baking powder, add to the creamed mixture and mix well. Finally stir in the milk until batter is smooth. Pour or spoon batter into the prepared pan.

Bake for 30 to 40 minutes in the preheated oven. For cupcakes, bake 20 to 25 minutes. Cake is done when it springs back to the touch. 

This recipe makes 12 cupcakes or 1 9x9-inch pan.  We tripled this recipe to make 3 9-inch round cake pans.  It was a little too much batter in each cake pan, because they rose up a little too high, but we were able to cut off the tops to create a flat top.

We had the hardest time getting the cakes out of the pans because we didn't line with parchment paper.  Please don't forget parchment paper if you're making a layer cake.  They won't come off the bottom of the pan very well without it!  Just don't forget to peal the paper off when you're assembling the cake.

Since our cakes pretty much came out in two or more pieces, we just stacked the white and red on top of the blue to create a three layer cake.  In order to frost it, we had to triple the frosting recipe as well, but like I said, that wasn't the right consistency for a layer cake.

The frosting and the cake turned out really yummy, but not necessarily together.  This cake recipe would probably go better with a cream cheese frosting.  It just tastes to heavy to have such a light frosting.

By the way, we used a whole bottle of both red and blue dyes to dye the two colored layers.  The colors turned out really nicely.

I'm going to try the flag cake for a not-so patriotic occasion, just to try it.  To save time, we'll probably just use a white cake mix, because those are some white cakes!

My dad says I post too much about food.

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