My husband has a coworker and friend who is a really amazing cook.  Not only does everything she makes tastes good, but it looks good too!  Luckily she agreed to do a guest post for me today about her Fourth of July Cake.  Thanks Shelly!
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I was really excited when Ashlee asked me to guest post on her blog today. I love to make cakes for ANY occasion- Weddings, Birthdays, Parties, you name it! Last year I stumbled upon a picture of this cake and couldn’t wait to give it a try. This is such a fun cake to make…while its not my original idea, unfortunately I can’t tag where I first saw it…this is my take on how to make a Flag Cake!

First up….the ingredients

The cake I am making today is a Coconut Cream Cake and one of my favorites for summertime! Its delicious by itself, but also, paired with any fresh fruit!

To get a good rich color when I make my cakes, I like to use Wilton’s Icing Colors. To get a dark red I recommend using the No Taste Red Color simply because to achieve a nice color you end up using quite a bit!

Now for this part there are actually two ways you can do this. The way that I did today was to separate my batter into 4 equal parts (about 1 1/2 cups) 2 WHITE 2 RED. If you find you don’t have four cake pans in the same size you can easily just separate the batter into TWO colors and then cut the cakes in half after they have cooled.

Now we make the recipe again!!! This time dying the WHOLE mix BLUE

Now this next part I sped through a bit, and as you’ll see later, paid a bit for it. It is important to FREEZE each layer. I have made LOTS of cakes and I can promise you cake is SOOOOO much easier to work with when it is frozen. You will have far less crumbs and it will slice much easier.

Before we get ahead of ourselves though, l did forget a little thing called icing! For today’s recipe I made a simple Coconut Buttercream. I also really like Cream Cheese Coconut icing with this but went with the ingredients I had on hand.

Begin by layering a RED layer and a WHITE layer…pretty basic, the next step is where the magic begins to happen! 🙂

Find a round object, I used a small Ikea Bowl but whatever size you are comfortable with will work. We are going to cut the CENTERS out of ONE WHITE, ONE RED and the WHOLE BLUE layers. I am sure you’ll have no problem “getting rid” of the red and white OUTSIDE RINGS (this cake is delicious), but for our cake we have no use for them, so just put them aside. Also we will not be using the INSIDE of the BLUE layer. Instead we are going to sandwich the red and white layers INSIDE the BLUE ring!

Hopefully this photo shows how everything all fits together. Alright we are almost done!!! Next cover the entire outside with the remaining icing. You don’t have to worry too much about a fancy frosting job because the true beauty of this cake is when you slice it to serve.

So pretty right??? Just wait till you see the inside…..

Now in this photo you will see why it is SOOOO important to FREEZE your layers. Today I DID NOT and as you can see the layers are quite crumbly, but you still get the idea! A little Patriotic Love found when we serve this yummy dessert!

I hope you enjoyed this little tutorial and try it soon—

RECIPES

EASY COCONUT CREAM CAKE

One Vanilla Cake Mix
One Box Instant Coconut Cream Pudding
1 Cup Oil
1 Cup Sour Cream
1/2 Cup Milk
1 tsp Vanilla
4 Eggs
1/2 Cup Coconut

**Mix all ingredients together, batter will be thick. Bake at 350 for 20-30 minutes. (20 if you go with 4 individual layers, 30 if you choose to just bake two layers.)  Bake 50 minutes for the entire mix-(blue layer).

COCONUT BUTTERCREAM

2 Cups White Vegetable Shortening
2 TBSP Water
1 TBSP Meringue powder
1-2 TSP Coconut Emulsion
1 TSP Vanilla Extract
2 POUNDS Confectioners Sugar

**Cream shortening, water, meringue powder and flavorings until smooth. Pour entire bag of Sugar into mixture and whip until desired consistency. (You may need to add additional water, 1 TBSP at a time to reach the consistency you want.)