Fourth of July Flag Cake

so  hiiiii. i made this 4th of July American Flag Cake that i learned to assemble from the blog '17 and baking' for this past 4th of July. it was a total hit! for the cake, i used a basic cake recipe i love from allrecipes.com!

this cake was a lot of fun to make, though, if you are going to attempt it and you're somewhat of a novice baker...give yourself some time, as you should with all cakes. ;)

there are quite a few steps and i'm a little too lazy to get into veryyyy detailed steps, but basically:
- make 3 round white cakes (whatever size you like and whatever white cake recipe you like). during the batter making process, dye one blue, one red, and leave one white. i used a combination of gel icing coloring and food coloring because that's what i had on hand. experiment with what you have or are comfortable with and keep adding color until you get the color you want.  it takes a lot of red to get cake batter red, so make sure you have plenty!
-make some cream cheese frosting and set aside. you will need enough to frost the cake (i also do a crumb coat, so if you end up doing that, make a little extra for that) and also enough to fill the cake with between layers...though if you prefer you can always "fill" the cake with something else.  i think next time i will alternate "filling" the cake with strawberry jam and cream cheese frosting.  you kind of want the color of your filling to match the red, white, and blue so....yeah. anyway....
-level all 3 sheet cakes. use a serrated knife or cake leveler (my preference) to cut the red and white sheet cakes in half, horizontally.
-leave the blue one whole.
-set aside one of each the red and white halves.
-take the other red and white halves (the ones you did not set aside).  you will be using the white layer as your base/1st layer so place it on a cake round or the serving plate you will be using. cover the top of the cake layer with frosting and stack the red layer on top. the frosting acts as a 'glue' to keep the cake layers together and also just makes the cake taste good!!
-take a bowl or something circular and use it as a guide or stencil to cut a circle from the middle of the other red and white layers you set aside earlier (not from the ones you just stacked).  leave about a 2 inch border. the size of the 'border' will be the size of the blue part of the flag (where the stars would be on a regular American flag)
-now, you should have 2 outer circles (one red, one white) and two inner circles (one red, one white). set the outer circles aside.  you will only be using the INNER circles of these layers. you will not be using the outer circles at all so you can throw them away or eat them or bribe someone with them to help you frost (my preference)!!
-take the whole blue layer (this layer should be whole, meaning, you did not cut it in half horizontally) and use the same bowl or stencil to cut out the same size circle from this sheet leaving the same 2 inch border (or however many inch border you went with). discard/use as bribe/set aside the inner circle of this layer. you will only be using the OUTER circle of this layer.
-at this point you should have: one red INNER circle, one white INNER circle, one blue OUTER circle, a cake round/serving platter with a whole red and white layer of cake 'glued' together with frosting.
-go back to your base layers (the white and red layers that you frosted and stacked earlier) and cover the top of the red layer with cream cheese frosting.
-stack the OUTER circle of the blue layer on top.  you should have a white base layer, a layer of frosting, a red layer, a layer of frosting, and a blue layer with a hole in it all stacked on top of each other.
-take the white and red INNER layers (make sure the white is on the bottom and the red is on top) you set aside and slide them into the hole of the blue layer--essentially filling in the layer.  :) still with me???
-ok, now you are done assembling the cake. trust me, your cake will turn out awesome. so don't worry about it. it may be hard to visualize, but it totally turns out. so don't stress out.
-take a break.
-ok, once you have taken a little break (you totally deserve one after getting through those steps!), take your frosting and go over your cake with a thin layer. i ALWAYS crumb coat my cakes because i can't stand crumbs on my frosting.  put your cake in the refrigerator and let the thin layer of frosting harden a little. this usually takes an hour. you can totally skip this step if you are already an awesome froster OR if you don't have time (no one will actually notice if there happens to be a crumb in the frosting...) OR if you just don't want to bother with this.
-once your cake's 'Crumb Coat' has hardened, or once you are ready to just finish already....take your cake and go over the entire thing with frosting.  frost frost frost your little heart out. once you have frosted the cake to your liking, decorate it...to your liking.

-elissa at '17 and Baking' keeps her cake plain, and i chose to cover the top with red, white, pink (it was a valentine's day mix i had in my pantry) and blue (i added these to my valentines day mix) nonpareils. i had a last minute thought to add pop rocks to the top of the cake, but didn't have any (ugh, how could i not have ONE packet of pop rocks on hand?!) and they didn't have any at the liquor store i stopped at on the way to the party, so i had to skip the pop rocks!! i thought that would add a 'firecracker in yo mouth' element to the cake. totally going to do this next year.
-make a big deal about how awesome your cake will be once it's cut, force someone to go for the first slice, prepare a default answer for the question: "how did you make that???". Lots of people will ask you.
-gloat!