red white and blue flag cake for fourth of july

Last year for the Fourth of July, my husbands parents were visiting from Hawaii, and his dad's cousin Holly invited us over for a Fourth of July party! His mom was going to make a curried rice salad, and I said I would make a cake. I pictured a red, white, and blue cake on the inside as well as the outside!

For the cake, I baked up my favorite vanilla cake (recipe in my book, The Hello Kitty Baking Book!) in two 8-inch round cake pans, let them cool, and then sliced them in half horizontally to give me four cake layers. Then I filled each layer with fresh whipped cream, sliced strawberries, and fresh blueberries.

For the frosting I whipped up my cream cheese frosting (recipe also in my book!), covered the top and sides with a quick crumb coat, and chilled it for 30 minutes. Unlike most of my cakes, this one wasn't going to need a final coat of frosting, as I was planning on decorating the sides with red white and blue piping.

For the piping, I used a disposable pastry bag fitting with a medium star tip, and piped little "heart"s down the cake, alternating with blue and white frosting. These were going to be the blue and white star portion of the flag.

Then I did the same with red and white frosting, except I piped them from left to right to give me red and white "stripes".

I kept going from left to right, until I eventually had gone around the entire cake and was back to my blue and white piping.

All done!

I kind of think the piping looks like a knitted design, don't you think?

Holly's party ended up being amazing! They had everything decked out in stars and stripes, including the paltes, tablecloths, selfie props, and they even handed out red white and blue beaded necklaces for everyone to wear! So much fun!

Happy Fourth of July!

red white and blue star pie for july fourth

Last year for Fourth of July, my youngest son Micah made this adorable art project at preschool. It was so simple, just a white paper plate with blue and red stars pasted on it, but I just loved his arrangement of the stars and it inspired me to make a pie that looked just like it!

I started by making my all-butter pie crust (recipe in my book, The Hello Kitty Baking Book), which I divided in half, shaped into discs, wrapped in plastic wrap and let chill in the fridge. After about 30 minutes, I rolled out my first disk (to about 1/8 inch thick) and fitted it into my pie plate. Then I mixed my filling (frozen mixed berries, sugar, flour, and salt) and added it on top of the bottom crust.



With the second disk of pie dough, I also rolled it out to 1/8 inch thick, but this time used various sized star cookie cutters to cut out shapes, which I then arranged on the top of the pie (I actually tried to match Micah's placement of stars for this!)

Then I brushed it with egg wash, sprinkled on some sanding sugar, and baked it at 425F for 15 minutes, after which I turned it down to 350F and baked it for another 45-50 minutes.

I baked the pie in the afternoon before dinner, and by the time we were done with dinner the pie had cooled enough to be sliced. Even then the filling was a bit too loose, so next time I'd probably add a little more flour to the filling. (Although I can't remember how much flour I used, so next time I'll probably have to actually follow a recipe!)

Here are my three loves all decked out in their Fourth of July clothes (purchased by Grandma!)

And here they are with Grandma and Grandpa, who were visiting us all the way from Hawaii.

On a side note, we also had red white and blue toast for breakfast! Cream cheese toasts (I also tried using fresh ricotta, but we all preferred the cream cheese), decorated with raspberry jam, blueberries, and sliced bananas. Delicious!

Happy Fourth of July!

flag tart for fourth of july

Last year we spent our Fourth of July at a friend's place in Truckee, and we had decided we would all bring various foods and have a BBQ there. Among other things, I wanted to bring a dessert that I could make in advance, would survive the four hour drive, and would last in the fridge until the next evening. I remembered a rectangular flag tart that I had made a couple of years back, and I thought something similar would be the perfect dessert to bring!

This time, I decided to make an Oreo cookie crust instead of my regular pie crust, so I found this recipe from Crazy for Crust (the recipe uses whole Oreos, with the cookie filling and all!)

After pulverizing my Oreos in the food processor and adding a bit of melted butter, I pressed the crumb mixture into a 9-inch tart pan, and baked it at 350F for about 10 minutes until set.

While the crust was cooling, I whipped up the no-bake filling, recipe from Martha Stewart. (Note: I only ended up using half of the filling, as the recipe is meant for a 2-inch tall springform pan)

Then I made my "flag" with fresh blueberries ...

... and fresh raspberries for the stripes on the flag. (Note: after washing the fruit, make sure to blot the fruit with paper towels, so that they don't leak water all over your pie!)

The combination of flavors was wonderful! With the chocolate crust, creamy filling, and tangy fresh fruit, it was perfect and refreshing for our Fourth of July celebration!

Hope you have a Happy Fourth! Enjoy!

captain america cookies

To go along with the Captain America flag-inside cake that I made for my son Matthew's 7th birthday last week, I also made these cookies and individually wrapped them to hand out as favors (as well as for him to pass out to his class).

For the cookies, I made my super-simple sugar cookie recipe (recipe in my new book!), and used a large circular cookie cutter to cut out the shapes. Once the cookies were baked and cooled, I whipped up a batch of royal icing (recipe also in the book!), divided it into three portions, and colored it red and blue (and left the third portion white). Then I used the stiff icing to pipe circles onto my cookies to form Captain America's shield logo.

I thinned out some of the icing, and used that to filled in the gaps with red, white, and blue runny icing. Once that dried overnight, I piped a white star in the middle, filled it in with white runny icing, and once that dried I piped a final white outline on the star.

You'd think it would be super easy since I was just piping circles instead of all the other cookie shapes that I've done, but I'd have to say that it's pretty hard to pipe perfectly round and well-spaced circles! Most of them turned out to be very wobbly circles!

Anyway, they still came out pretty cute, and Matthew and his friends loved them! Hooray!

captain america cake with flag inside and haupia coconut filling

My oldest baby Matthew turned seven yesterday! This was the first year where he invited his own friends to his birthday party (as opposed to us inviting our friends and their kids!) So he invited three kids from school, and then my family and our neighbors also came to celebrate with him!

This year he wanted a Captain America cake, so Captain America cake he got! On the outside AND on the inside! I've always wanted to make a flag-inside cake for July 4th or something, like this one at 17 and Baking, but never had the chance ... until now!

For the inside of the cake, I made two batches of vanilla cake (recipe in my new book!), divided and colored them, and baked them in 8-inch round pans. One batch of vanilla cake will make two 8-inch cake layers, so I ended up with four cake layers. Since I only needed three (one red, one white, one blue), I wrapped the fourth layer really well in plastic wrap and froze it for later.

To fill the layers, I made a haupia coconut whipped cream filling, based on Matthew's love of coconut (he recently decided that chocolate haupia pie from Ted's Bakery in Hawaii was his favorite dessert ever!). To give my whipped cream a nice coconut flavor, I used Trader Joe's coconut cream, since it was thicker and more concentrated than regular coconut milk.

To assemble the cake, I cut both the white and red cakes in half horizontally. The first white layer went on the cake round, and then I filled it with the coconut whipped cream. Then the first red layer went on top, along with another layer of coconut whipped cream.

Next I took a 4-inch cookie cutter, and cut out the middle of my blue cake layer (this layer does not get cut in half horizontally). Then I also used the 4-inch cookie cutter to cut out my remaining white and red layers.

Then I placed the blue ring layer on top, with the 4-inch white cake layer on the inside of the ring, more coconut filling, and then the 4-inch red cake layer. This is what makes the flag inside!

For the outside of the cake, I whipped up a batch of cream cheese buttercream (recipe also in my new book!), and did a quick crumb coat on the top and sides of the cake. Then I used a toothpick to draw my Captain America design on the top of the cake.

 Finally, I used used the markings to fill in the design with piped stars - white for the star, blue for the circle around the stars, and then alternating rings of red and white.

Matthew loved the cake! And it went perfectly with his Captain America shirt! :)

Although, he didn't even notice the flag inside! He didn't even realize it until I asked him about it on the way home! I had to show him a picture to prove it, and even then he asked "how come there are no stars on the blue part of the flag?"... (sigh)

He also only took one bite of the cake before running off to play with his friends, so he didn't even notice the coconut filling!

But, before bed that night we asked him on a scale of 1 to 10, how much fun he had at his party. At first he said it was a 10. And then he changed his mind and said it was 100! Awww...

Happy Birthday, my Matthew! Thanks for being such an awesome kid! :)

*** Update: You can also see the Captain America cookies that I made to go along with the cake, here!