This traditional potato salad, which is vegan by birth, may be found on Italian tables from the North to the South. There are formal luncheons, family gatherings, evening dinners, even cafeterias in hospitals and schools where it is served. Adding cooked green beans is common in Italy. Pasta and pesto are a fantastic combination for leftovers. Happy eating!
| Prep Time: | 1 hr 30 mins |
| Cook Time: | 30 mins |
| Additional Time: | 1 hr |
| Total Time: | 3 hrs |
| Servings: | 16 |
| Yield: | 1 layer cake |
Ingredients
- 2 (15.25 ounce) packages white cake mix
- 9 egg whites
- 1 cup vegetable oil
- 3 ¾ cups whole milk
- 2 tablespoons clear vanilla extract
- 2 tablespoons red food coloring
- 1 tablespoon blue food coloring
- 1 cup white chocolate chips
- 10 cups fluffy white frosting
- 1 tablespoon white chocolate chips, or as needed
- 2 tablespoons white sugar, or as needed
- 1 4-inch round paper or cardboard stencil
Instructions
- Preheat oven to 350 degrees F (175 degrees C). Grease and line 4 8-inch round cake pans with parchment paper.
- Combine white cake mix, egg whites, vegetable oil, milk, and vanilla extract in a large mixing bowl. Beat for 30 seconds using an electric mixer on low speed. Increase mixer speed to medium and beat for 2 more minutes. The batter will still be slightly lumpy.
- To make the red cakes, measure half the batter into a separate bowl and whisk in red food coloring. Evenly transfer the red batter into 2 of the 8-inch prepared cake pans; smooth tops of batter with a spatula. Transfer half of the remaining uncolored batter into a 3rd prepared cake pan; smooth top as before. This will be the white cake portion.
- Add blue food coloring to the remaining uncolored batter in the large mixing bowl; fold 1 cup white chocolate chips into blue batter until combined. Transfer batter to remaining prepared 8-inch cake pan; smooth top of batter with a spatula.
- Bake all 4 cakes in the preheated oven until a toothpick inserted into the center of each cake comes out clean, about 30 minutes. Remove the cakes from oven and place onto cooling racks until cooled completely.
- Run a knife around edge of each cooled cake. Invert cakes, remove pans, and peel off parchment paper. Use a sharp knife to trim tops of cakes flat and even.
- Cut both of the red cake layers and the white cake layer in half horizontally. You will have 4 thin red cake layers and 2 thin white cake layers.
- Place a 4-inch round stencil on top of 1 thin red cake layer; cut out a 4-inch red cake round. Repeat, placing stencil on 1 thin white cake layer to make 1 4-inch white cake round. Center the 4-inch round stencil on the blue cake; cut out and remove center portion covered by the stencil to make a blue cake ring.
- To assemble the cake, you will need 2 thin 8-inch red cake layers, 1 thin 8-inch white cake layer, 1 4-inch thin red cake circle, 1 4-inch thin white cake circle, and 1 blue 8-inch cake ring. Reserve the leftover thin red cake layer and other cake pieces for making crumbs for decorating.
- To assemble cake, place 1 8-inch thin red cake layer on a cake pan and frost the top generously with white frosting. Place the thin 8-inch white cake layer on top of the red one, and frost the top. Place remaining 8-inch thin red cake layer atop the white one. Frost the red layer.
- Place the blue ring cake on top of the 2nd red cake layer and carefully frost the inside of the blue cake ring. Gently fit the 4-inch white cake layer into the blue cake ring. Frost the top of the 4-inch white center. Place the 4-inch red cake layer on top of the white one. Gently press small cake circles flush with the top of the blue ring.
- Frost the entire outside of the cake generously with the remaining frosting.
- Crumble red and blue pieces of leftover cake into 2 separate bowls. Score lines into the top of the cake’s frosting with a kitchen knife to make a flag design on top of the cake. It should have a 2-inch square at the upper left for blue field and white stars, and 7 thick horizontal stripes about 1 inch wide.
- Fill the square field at the upper left with blue crumbs and press 1 tablespoon white chocolate chips upside-down into the blue crumbs to make ‘stars.’ Fill the bottom stripe and every other stripe with red crumbs to make red stripes. Sprinkle white sugar generously into the white stripes to make them stand out.
- To serve, cut cake into wedges. The inside of the cake will reveal its layers of red and white stripes and blue field with white chocolate chip stars in every slice.
Nutrition Facts
| Calories | 1110 kcal |
| Carbohydrate | 215 g |
| Cholesterol | 8 mg |
| Dietary Fiber | 1 g |
| Protein | 11 g |
| Saturated Fat | 7 g |
| Sodium | 769 mg |
| Sugars | 201 g |
| Fat | 26 g |
| Unsaturated Fat | 0 g |
Reviews
I followed the instructions on the box of cake mix that I bought. The cake came out great and the family loved it.
This is such a labor intensive cake. It turned out well but didn’t look as perfect and professional as I had expected and hoped for. My biggest disappointment is the amount of unused cake that is leftover after the assembly. It’s almost the equivalent of another cake! I wasn’t about to throw it out so I froze all of the different pieces and hubby and I will be eating it for a long time. Because of this, I won’t make it again.
I made this cake for the 4th of July and it was awesome! It was really hard not to crumble the cake while layering though, but I managed to save it. The cake was really good with whipped cream frosting and tasted better when refrigerated. All in all a pretty good cake.
I didn’t have any trouble re-creating this cake exactly as shown – it was a lot of fun, and I will make it every 4th of July. Every piece you cut looks great, my family loved it!!! What a clever creation
The recipe is good, the cake itself is a treat to look at, and it tastes really good. I did accidentally and intentionally alter the recipe (like the red stripe is purple because I didn’t have red food coloring) and yet in the end it turned out amazing.
This recipe is not a quick one. It’s time consuming and messy but worth it. I bake cakes all the time and my husband says it’s the best (ie: most moist) I’ve ever made. I just used a standard box cake not taking note of the ounce difference in the recipe and it was fine. I used clear mixing bowls after mixing to make the equal amounts to mix my colors in. You’ll want gel coloring to get the colors bright enough. Since it is ridiculously moist you’ll want to freeze or refrigerate your rounds before working with them. I didn’t do this step the first time and it fell apart but I was able to fix it with icing and throwing it back in the fridge. I’m making again tomorrow and I will bake, cool, refrigerate, slice rounds in half or cut the 4″ circles then wrap and freeze. Lots of steps, but worth it. It should be much easier to assemble frozen. I use my fave buttercream frosting. After assembling you’ll want to do a good crumb coat and then refrigerate for an hour or so then frost to finish. Again… time consuming, but a show stopping cake!
Followed directions to the tea and this is what I got. Think it might have worked if I had left out the chocolate chips. Lot of money and TIME down the drain and no dessert to take to block party. ??
Great recipe but it takes time and patience to put together. Well worth it though, for the WOW factor from your friends when you slice into it.
I’ve made this cake twice using Betty Crocker’s recipe which has strawberries in the red stripes and blueberries in the blue ring. Adds wonderful flavor! Also gets rave reviews. Here’s the link if you want to try https://www.bettycrocker.com/recipes/red-white-and-blue-layered-flag-cake/9aaef2a0-b01d-4cb8-9bab-c0d0451a1065
I Love it
I turned it into a key-lime cake. The cake became dense because of all the stirring of the colored batter. The white cake was the best. I would not add the white chocolate chips. fun for the holiday.
This was a hit at our family gathering on July 4th.
This cake was attractive, tasty and moist! Directions worked fine. It is very similar to a flag cake I have made for a few years, but I will use this recipe again.
This was such a fun cake! It got many compliments. I gave it 4 stars because I had some difficulty moving the cut slices and the white one broke apart. I glued it back together with frosting so it wasn’t a total loss. The cake recipe was delicious, very dense but moist – no one believed it was a box cake originally. ( I used Aldi classic white). I crumbled and froze the unused portions of the cake and plan to use them for cake pops. I also didn’t have white chocolate chips, so I substituted ghost sprinkles from Halloween. Nobody even noticed ??
I am not a novice to cake making. I have never had a cake fall apart like this one did. Against my better judgement I followed the recipe and used the milk instead of the water suggested on the cake mix. The cake litterally fell apart while trying to assemble it. My husband helped me lift the blue ring to put on top and it broke into pieces before we could get it on the cake. It was so tender. I will however try it again because the slices I could save looked great and I love a challange. All that ate the pieces said it was great. I did take a picture but only to send out to friends saying I had an explosive experience and have a great 4th of July.
My family loved the surprise inside! I watched the video as instructions and then made it my own. I used only 2 prepared boxes of cake, only added the white chips to the top, and made my own almond buttercream icing. Delish and a festive centerpiece of our party yesterday!
Lot of work. I used 9” pans (that’s what I have). Used 4 packages of white cake mix that allows for using all of the egg. 1 pkg in each of the 4 pans. I followed the directions on the cake box. Had to use 2 bottles of food coloring for the blue cake .
I made this cake and it came out absolutely amazing. It does take a bit of work to put together but me being an experienced cake baker I knew how to handle it . Also what I did was I bought one box of super moist white cake mix and instead of coloring remaining white cake mix for the red and blue cakes I bought the Funfetti blue and red cake mix which comes colored already in the perfect shade that you need. I knew it was going to be a lot of work to make it so I used the box cake and pre colored box cake to make it as easy as possible
Everything went great until assembling. Long story short every layer crumbled and the cake fell apart. I tried holding the blue layer together with toothpicks but no luck. I ended up tossing everything into a 9×13 casserole dish. I had told my daughter I would bring a patriotic cake, explaining what it would look like. After such a fiasco I called it the Revolutionary War cake! It still tasted great, very moist, and to quote my daughter “cake is cake whatever it looks like “!
Made this for a friend who just moved to the US. This cake is a stunner for sure! It is time consuming, but in the end it looks great. Only gave it four stars because while it is pretty looking it’s also pretty one note, and that note is sweet. I think it would be better if instead of using buttercream you used a raspberry curd to cut the sweetness of this cake and give it a sharp, tartness. Doesn’t have to be raspberry, could be any red fruit so that it still matches the red stripes of the cake. I didn’t decorate the top of it to look like a flag because I wanted it to be a surprise for when you cut into it. All in all good recipe and looks impressive.
I made this just as directed and it came out great. It’s the most challenging cake I’ve ever made and it’s worth it every time to hear people say,”How’d you do that?”