Fourth of July Cake Decorating Ideas
Decorating a cake for a Fourth of July celebration is one of many fun ways you can enhance your family’s holiday enjoyment. Whether you are joining friends for a backyard bash or packing a picnic for yourself and the kids, a cake with patriotic style is sweet way to end the meal. Even if you don’t know which end of the pastry bag is up, you can still create a professional looking cake. Make a quick sketch of your design (it doesn’t matter if you can draw or not), assemble all of your supplies before you start and work slowly to avoid messy mistakes.
Flag Cakes
A flag motif is one of the simplest designs to decorate your holiday cake with. You can add more or fewer intricate details depending on your level of decorating experience.
For a super-easy flag cake, start with a rectangular cake and frost it with any type of white frosting. Cover the upper, left-hand corner of the cake (about 1/6th of the total size) with blueberries, blue candies or blue sprinkles. Create the flag’s red stripes with raspberries, sliced strawberries, cinnamon candies or licorice ropes. Make the first stripe at the top edge of the cake and space them about 1 ½ inches apart, depending on overall size of your cake. Give the cake a neat, finished look by outlining the bottom edge (where the cake meets the plate) with the same red material you used for the stripes.
If you are comfortable with using a piping bag and tips, create the flag design by piping it onto an unfrosted cake. First, pipe a series of small blue rosettes in the corner to create the star field. Make your red and white stripes using the same size of rosette tip you used for the field. With a small star tip, fill in the blue field with stars. Don’t worry about fitting in exactly 50 stars; just fill the space in with neat rows of them. Outline the bottom of the cake with alternating red, white and blue rosettes.
Uncle Sam Cake
The Uncle Sam cake does require some elementary piping skills, but is still simple enough for a beginner to try. Cover the bottom third of a rectangular cake with a flat layer of white frosting that’s been lightly tinted with pink or peach, something that can pass as a skin tone. Use a large rosette tip or leaf tube to create white and red stripes on the top two-thirds of the cake. With frosting tinted in a deep shade of blue, make two rosettes in the pink/peach field to represent eyes and a thick blue line across the entire cake to separate the face from the hat. Use a petal tip to make ribbons of white frosting for Uncle Sam’s hair, beard, mustache and eyebrows.
Star Cakes
Stars are a versatile design to adorn your Fourth of July cake with. They work equally well on sheet, round or layered cakes, even on cupcakes. For a fast star cake, use premade red and blue candy stars (available in the cake decorating aisle of your grocery store) on a cake that’s been frosted with white. Alternately, you can make or purchase star-shaped sugar cookies, decorated with colorful sprinkles or frosting, and use them to add a delicious edible design to your cake.
