I won…I won! My neighborhood had its annual Independence Day parade and picnic, and my entry came in first in the Most Patriotic Dessert competition.
(If you could see our “parade,” you’d laugh. Residents decorate their tractors, trucks, antique cars, bicycles, golf carts – and even their dogs – in red, white and blue to march a few blocks on the way to the picnic. Being the good sport that she is, Beverly participates with us every year.)
This is the first time that there’s been any kind of contest. So when we heard about the Most Patriotic Dessert challenge, our competitive spirits surfaced. Originally, we had planned to make Beverly’s Red, White & Blue 10-Minute Trifle because the traditional English dessert had been one of George Washington’s favorites. And because Beverly likes to make desserts with booze in them.
As luck would have it, Beverly and Marc came down with a debilitating flu. The last place Beverly wanted to be was in the kitchen. So I was on my own and decided to make something that I’d done before: a Fourth of July Flag Cake.
Directions:
- Bake a sheet cake. My pan was approximately 11”X15”. Choose any flavor you want. I chose almond.
- Cut pieces from both long sides of the cake to resemble “waves” of the flag.
- Cover the cake with white icing. I usually cover this cake with whipped cream, which makes it taste like a strawberry shortcake. But because it was going to be sitting outside in the hot sun, I substituted a traditional white icing of confectioner’s sugar, shortening, flavor extract (vanilla and almond in my case) and water.
- Draw a square in the icing with a knife in the upper left hand corner to be the blue field of the flag. (It helps to look at a photo of the American flag to get the stars and stripes right.)
- Pipe some of the icing around the perimeter of the cake and around the square to contain the fruit so that it won’t fall off the cake later.
- Cut tops off the strawberries and slice them vertically about 1/8” thick.
- Overlap strawberry pieces to form 7 stripes on the cake.
- Place blueberries on the cake to form the blue field.
- Pipe white icing between the rows of strawberries to create the white stripes and on top of the blueberries to form the 50 stars.
What did I win? No trophy, no medal, no certificate…but lots of goodwill from the neighborhood kids. Which I hope will come in handy around Halloween.
Saucy Sis1
Flag Cake for Fourth of July
