American Tie Dye Cake

Intro

For this Excellent Edible Art Experience, I decided to make an American Tie Dye Cake. I enjoy a good patriotic bite of sweetness so I thought this american flag cake was the perfect idea. The cake is actually 3 separate cakes stacked on top of one another. To add to the aesthetic, beyond just the outside of the cake, I created a tie dye effect using different colored batters within the cake. To frost the outside, I created a buttercream to spread on as a base layer, followed by piping the American flag design on with a separate frosting.

The basic supplies you will need is a stand mixer (3 is preferable the but I used 1 and washed it out a couple of times), an oven, 3 9-inch diameter cake tins, and piping bags for the frosting.

Ingredients!

The Cake!

- 1/2 lb unsalted butter

- 2 cups granulated sugar

- 2 tsp pure vanilla extract

- 4 large eggs

- 3 cups all purpose flour

- 2 tsp baking powder

- 1/4 tsp sea salt

- 1 3/4 cup whole milk

The Buttercream!

- 3 cups confectioners' sugar

- 1 cup salted butter (room temperature)

- 1 tsp vanilla extract

- 1-2 tbsp whipping cream

The Frosting!

- 1/2 lb unsalted butter at room temperature

- 3 3/4 cup confectioners' sugar

- 1 tsp vanilla extract

- 1/4 tsp sea salt

Before you do anything else, you should take out your butter so it can begin to soften and be used later on. Then, you need to turn the oven on. The cakes bake at 350 degrees, so turn the oven on to 350 degrees so when the cake batter is ready, you can toss it right in the oven. Also, you have to have your pans buttered. I used Crisco shortening and rubbed it along all 3 of the 9 inch cake tins to prep the tins for the batter. This will help the cakes come out of the tin easier later on when it's time to decorate.

For this section you need the Stand Mixer with the paddle attachment, and you need all of the ingredients for the cake batter. Using a stand mixer, whip the butter for a minute on high speed until light. Scrape the sides of the bowl down and then add the granulated sugar, mix for 2 minutes until well combined. Scrape down the bowl again, then add the vanilla extract, mix on medium. While mixing, add the eggs one at a time, mixing until it is all combined well into a smooth mixture. In a separate bowl, combine the Flour, Baking powder, and sea salt. With the mixer on low speed, add half the flour mixture. Once combined, add half the milk. Finally, once all of that is combined, add the rest of the wet and dry ingredients, making sure the bowl is scraped at each addition to combine fully. Stop Mixing when a smooth mixture has been created, do not over whip. Bam, the batter is done.

Now that the batter has been completed, it's time to begin the tie-dye effect. Grab 3 separate bowls. Do your best to evenly distribute the batter in the three bowls. Now that there's three separate bowls, grab your blue and red food coloring. There's no distinct way to do this, so I just slowly added more and more food coloring until I had the desired color. I dyed one bowl blue, one bowl red, and kept one bowl the color of the batter to act as the white.

With these different batters, have others help you pour all three in at the same time. Try your best to have an even amount of each batter in each tin but there's no need for perfection. Once they have set, use a toothpick to swirl the batter to mix up the colors, but do not mix enough to combine the colors. The idea is for the colors to be swirled around one another, but do not let the colors combine into one dull color.

Place all three cake tins into the oven and bake for 35-40 minutes. A little trick my mom taught me when checking to see if the cake is done cooking yet or not is to stick in a toothpick. If the toothpick has cake on it when it comes out, it needs more time. If the toothpick comes out clean then the cakes are complete. Once the cakes are out of the oven, make sure they are cooled for the decorating later on (I put mine on a table in my garage during the winter and that got the job done.

In a stand mixer fitted with a whisk, mix together the sugar and butter (make sure not to use the unsalted butter you need that for the frosting). Mix on low speed until well blended and then increase speed to medium/high and beat for another 3 minutes, trying to create stiff peaks. Add vanilla and cream and continue to beat on medium speed for 1 minute more, adding more cream if needed for spreading consistency. The goal is the create a good buttercream that you can use to spread over the outside of the cakes, as well as being the connecting "glue" between each cake.

Using a stand mixer with the whisk attachment, whip the room temp unsalted butter for a minute on high speed, add in the vanilla and whip for another 10-15 seconds until incorporated. In a separate bowl, combine confectioners’ sugar and salt. With the mixer on a low speed, add the sugar mixture 1 cup at a time until combined, scrape the bowl after each addition. Whip on high speed for 3 minutes until light and fluffy.

Divide up the frosting into 3 bowls. Do the same coloring method as with the cake batter, creating red, white, and blue icing. Place each batch of frosting into a piping bag and prepare to decorate.

Now that the cakes have cooled and everything is ready to go, remove the cakes from their pans. Choose a cake (it doesn't matter too much but try to put the largest cake at the bottom) to be the base. Cut off the top layer of cake in order to create a flat surface to spread the buttercream on and eventually stack on more cakes. Once you have the top cut off, begin spreading the buttercream only on top, not on the sides. The point of this layer of buttercream is to help hold the cake together. Then repeat the cutting process for the second cake and spread another layer of buttercream on top. Finally, add the final cake on top to complete the triple-Decker cake. From here, you want to spread the remaining buttercream all over the top and around the sides to cover the cake with a layer of white to make it easy to decorate.

First, what I did to begin the decorating was add a tiny bit of red frosting around the outside to spread to change the side color from white to red. After that, I began my biggest decorations. First, I did the blue corner so I could establish a part of the cake for the stars of the flag. I piped a small dollop of blue over and over to fill the space with blue. After that, I began the lines. I decided in advance that I wanted the top and bottom to both be a white stripe. From there, I divided up the cake with lines to create the alternating red + white lines of the American flag. From there, I simply piped out lines next to each other, alternating color to create something as close to the real American flag as possible. To finish it off, I added the touch of small blue dollops around the bottom to add a bit more blue to the red + white dominant aesthetic. From there, I cut into the cake and enjoyed the wonderful cake I worked so hard to make.