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This American Flag Cake Recipe is easy to make and perfect for Memorial Day or 4th of July. With no special decorating skills needed, this homemade white cake is topped with cream cheese frosting and then topped with fresh berries to look like a flag.
Why You’ll Love This American Flag Cake Recipe
- Patriotic party favorite – everything I bring this to any patriotic event, everyone always raves about it. Not only presentation, but also how delicious the homemade cake is.
- Decorating is easy – Since the decorating is done with fruit, you do not need special equipment or any special skills.
- Fresh fruit – the fresh berries are so refreshing and perfect for Summer. The combination of the fluffy white cake, fresh berries and cream cheese frosting is heavenly!
Ingredients Needed:
This is a delicious moist and fluffy cake from scratch with just a handful of basic ingredients.
- Cake flour – this gives the cake a light and tender texture.
- Other dry ingredients – baking powder, baking soda and salt.
- Butter (or shortening) – Shortening will leave the cake looking whiter, but the butter works well too.
- Sugar – granulated.
- Milk – You can use whole milk or 2%.
- Vanilla Extract – Clear vanilla works best for coloring.
- Egg Whites – large eggs at room temperature.
- Blueberries and Red raspberries – making sure you are using fresh berries.
- Cream Cheese Frosting – make our easy homemade cream cheese frosting or use store bought.
How To Make A Flag Cake
Sheet cakes are so easy to make and this one will be the biggest hit for your next fourth of July gathering.
- Mix the wet ingredients, then dry ingredients and combine together.
- Pour the batter into a baking dish. Top the batter with blueberries and raspberries gently blend.
- Bake in a 9 x 13-inch pan for 35 to 45 minutes.
Decorating
- Dry the berries with paper towels.
- Prepare the frosting and spread evenly over the cooled cake.
- Line the blueberries in a rectangular pattern on the top left corner. 8 across and 8 down for a total of 48.
- Line rows of raspberries side by side along the top to form a red stripe and repeat leaving enough space for the white stripes (piped frosting) making a total of 7 lines.
- For the white stripes, either leave them the way it is, or fill in the space with extra piped frosting.
Storing
When you have leftovers of this cake or if you are making it before you are ready to serve, you will want to store the cake in the refrigerator. Whenever you have a cake with a cream cheese frosting or fresh fruit, and this cake has both, you want to make sure it is stored in the refrigerator for up to 3-4 days.
Tips and Tricks
- Berries – When you are making this cake, you want to use fresh berries. It has the best flavor and will give the best appearance. If you only have access to frozen berries, you will want to make sure they are thawed thoroughly and dry them as best as they can be. This will keep it from bleeding onto the frosting. Feel free to switch out the raspberries to strawberries.
- Frosting – feel free to use any white frosting. My Vanilla Buttercream frosting or Cool Whip frosting are great choices.
- Cake – I highly recommend making this homemade cake because it’s so easy and delicious. However, feel free to use any boxed white cake mix.
Other Patriotic Desserts You Will Love
American Flag Cake
This American Flag Cake Recipe is easy to make and perfect for Memorial Day or 4th of July. With no special decorating skills needed, this homemade white cake is topped with cream cheese frosting and then topped with fresh berries to look like a flag.
Servings: 16
Ingredients
Cake
- 2 1/2 cups cake flour
- 2 teaspoons baking powder
- 1/2 teaspoon salt
- 1/2 teaspoon baking soda
- 3/4 cup shortening or butter (softened)
- 1 1/2 cups granulated sugar
- 1 1/4 cups milk whole or 2%
- 1 teaspoon clear vanilla extract
- 5 large egg whites room temperature
- 1 cup blueberries
- 1 cup red raspberries
Icing
- 8 oz cream cheese softened
- 1/2 cup butter softened
- 3 tbsp cream or milk
- 2 teaspoon clear vanilla extract
- 2 1/2 cups powdered sugar
- 1 32 oz red raspberries this amount will depend on size of berries. I used 83 raspberries on this cake.
- 1 12 oz blueberries I used 48 blueberries.
Instructions
Cake
- Preheat oven to 350 degrees and Spray a 9×13 inch baking dish with non-stick cooking spray.
- Combine cake flour, baking soda, baking powder and salt and set aside.
- In large mixing bowl, with your whisk attachment, combine the butter and sugar at medium speed until smooth. Add egg whites and beat on high speed until combined. Pour in milk and vanilla and mix at medium speed until combined.
- Add the dry ingredients into the wet ingredients, small amounts at a time, mixing on medium speed just until combined. Do not overmix.
- Pour batter into prepared pan. Place blueberries and raspberries on top of batter and gently blend into batter. Berries will mostly sink to bottom as cake bakes.
- Place pan on center rack of preheated oven and bake for 35-45 minutes until a toothpick inserted into center of cake comes out clean.
- Remove to a wire rack and allow to cool completely. After cool, remove from pan to ice.
Frosting
- Mix butter and cream cheese until light and fluffy. Add cream and vanilla and mix until combined. Include powdered sugar and mix on medium speed until thoroughly combined.
- Frost the top of cake evenly.
Decorating
- Be sure berries are dry by laying them on a paper towel, place another towel on top and pat gently.
- Place blueberries in a rectangular pattern on top left corner of cake. 8 across and 6 down for a total of 48.
- Place raspberries side by side along top long edge of cake to form a “stripe”. The amount you use will depend on size of your berries. Do the same for the bottom edge of cake.
- “Eyeball” or measure to the center of your cake and make a raspberry stripe across the center.
- Make two more stripes within each of the two unfilled areas.
- At this point, you can simply leave the white areas blank and let the icing represent the white stripes or pipe a white stripe.
- For the piped stripe I used a 2D open star tip and piped a border type stripe.
Last Step:
Please leave a rating and comment letting us know how you liked this recipe! This helps our business to thrive and continue providing free, high-quality recipes for you.Nutrition
Calories: 659kcal | Carbohydrates: 111g | Protein: 10g | Fat: 21g | Saturated Fat: 13g | Polyunsaturated Fat: 1g | Monounsaturated Fat: 5g | Trans Fat: 1g | Cholesterol: 58mg | Sodium: 561mg | Potassium: 169mg | Fiber: 1g | Sugar: 92g | Vitamin A: 723IU | Vitamin C: 3mg | Calcium: 73mg | Iron: 0.4mg
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4 comments on “American Flag Cake”
Can I substitute all-purpose for the cake flower? If so are the measurements the same?
Hi Christy. Yes, you can sub all-purpose for cake flour, you’ll just have a slightly more dense cake with a coarser crumb.
There is a significant typo in the recipe that almost ruined my cake. It says to add the sugar to the dry ingredients but then it says again in the next step to add the sugar to cream the butter. well, guess what, I didn’t pick up on this until after i had added the sugar to the dry ingredients so I wasn’t able to cream the butter with the sugar. i almost threw the whole thing out and started over but I couldn’t, didn’t have any more sugar. So i figured I would just wing it and im glad I did because it came out pretty darn good in the end. It was delicious.
Thanks Roberta. Sorry about that, I just corrected the instructions.