Happy Belated Birthday, America!

I love the 4th of July! Fireworks, family, friends, good food and lots of fun! I could think of no better way to honor America’s Birthday Bash then by making a totally awesome cake! This cake was super fun to make and I am so excited to share it with you! I want to thank my friend Julia (check out her awesome blog here) for sending me this adorable idea.

Here is the outside of the cake:

While the sides could have been smoother, I really loved the accidental design on the top! Before I move on to the inside of the cake, I must must brag about this frosting because I was so proud of it! It is a cream cheese based frosting and here is the recipe:

(note: I found this recipe here: )

Ingredient:

2 (8 ounce) packages cream cheese, softened
1/2 cup butter, softened
2 cups sifted confectioners’ sugar
1 teaspoon vanilla extract

Directions

In a medium bowl, cream together the cream cheese and butter until creamy. Mix in the vanilla, then gradually stir in the confectioners’ sugar. Store in the refrigerator after use.

I used 1/2 of this recipe to do a crumb coat of the cake and the 2/3 of the layer fillings. I then added a container of Cool Whip to the rest of the frosting to do the final coating. I was super pleased with this method… I so prefer a cream cheese frosting to a non-Publix butter cream.

OK- so what is so darn special about this cake? Hang on, folks!

Here is what I did:

I started off with the following 8-inch cakes:

2- white (any white cake recipe or mix)
2-red (used red food coloring, but next year will likely try using a red velvet cake)
1-blue (again used blue food coloring)

Here they are (along with the leftover cupcakes):

Once the cakes cooled, I leveled them using this. Then it was time to stack.

Behold:

I filled the layers with alternating blobs of cream cheese frosting and vanilla pudding. If you are going to fill with something other than frosting, a great tip I learned is to pipe a layer of frosting around the perimeter of the cake. This prevents all of your yummy filling from oozing all over the place. I used the Wilton 1M tip. It looks like this: