Red, White and Blue Cake

A fun and easy cake decorating project for a red, white and blue cake. This cute holiday cake features two layers of red and blue vanilla cake, frosted with fluffy white buttercream. Red, white and blue sprinkles and birthday candles are all the decoration it needs. Make this festive and colorful cake for the 4th of July or Memorial Day!

You might also love these high altitude recipes for blueberry ice cream, cherry cobbler, cherry crumb pie, and blueberry lattice pie.

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Why You’ll Love This Recipe

Moist and Fluffy Cake. The vanilla cake is just an all-around great party cake or birthday cake, exceptionally moist, impossible to mess up, and easily customized with other flavors in your filling or buttercream.

Easy to Decorate. You don’t need any special cake decorating skills to toss a few sprinkles into buttercream. I decided to keep the outside of the cake more subtle, with the focus on the vivid colors inside the cake. And people love seeing the red white and blue surprise inside when the first slice of cake is cut.

Smaller Size. Not everyone has a huge get together for the 4th of July weekend. So if you have a small family, this two layer, 6-inch red white and blue cake is the perfect size for 8 servings. However, you can still make the full-sized cake recipe for an 8-inch cake that serves 16 people.

High Altitude Tested. I develop all the recipes on my site for Denver’s altitude of 5,280 feet. If you’re at a lower or higher elevation, please see my FAQs for guidance on adjusting recipes for your altitude.

See the recipe card at the end of the post for the full ingredients list and instructions.

Ingredients

Cake

• High Altitude Vanilla Cake. Use 1/2 the recipe for a two-layer 6-inch cake or the full recipe for a two-layer 8-inch cake.
• Gel Food Coloring. For the red cake, I used “super red”, and for the blue cake, I used “royal blue” and “navy blue”, using the Americolor brand of gel food coloring. You can use less or more of the food coloring, depending on how pale or vivid you want the color of the cake to be.

Buttercream

• Vanilla Buttercream. Use 1/2 the recipe for a two-layer 6-inch cake or the full recipe for a two-layer 8-inch cake. While you may not like the idea of using vegetable shortening in your frosting, I recommend using half butter and half shortening for a whiter color. This is a red white and blue cake, after all, and it won’t look as nice if the buttercream is yellow.
• Bright White Gel Food Coloring. This is optional, but a few drops also help to brighten the white and neutralize the yellow tones of the butter.
• Sprinkles. Use any variety of red, white and blue nonpareils, jimmies or confetti sprinkles (quins) that you have. The night before I planned to make this cake, I realized I didn’t have any red white and blue sprinkle mixes. So I hand-picked sprinkles from some other mixes – you can imagine how tedious and time consuming this was, especially for the nonpareils. For this reason, I didn’t use as many sprinkles as I’d planned, so my sprinkles are a little more subtle.
• Birthday Candles. For a festive touch, decorate your cake with some tall red white and blue birthday candles. I love Meri Meri candles, and I used some candles from this blue and green candle mix, as well as some shorter red candles I had on hand.

Instructions

Cake

• Preheat the oven to 350 F, and position a rack in the center of the oven. Lightly spray the bottoms of two 6-inch cake pans (serves 8 people) or two 8-inch cake pans (serves 16 people) with non-stick baking spray.
• Prepare the Vanilla Cake batter as instructed. Use 1/2 the recipe for a 6-inch cake or the full recipe for an 8-inch cake. Take care not to over-mix the batter, since you’ll be mixing it again to add the food coloring.
• Divide the batter evenly between two bowls. To one bowl, stir in 1/2 – 1 teaspoon “super red” gel food coloring. To the other bowl, stir in 1/2 – 3/4 teaspoon “royal blue” gel food coloring and 1/4 teaspoon “navy blue” gel food coloring.

• Scrape the batter into the cake pans. Bake 6-inch cakes for about 25-28 minutes, and 8 inch cakes for about 30-35 minutes, until the tops of the cakes spring back when gently touched or a toothpick or cake tester comes out clean.
• Set the pans on a cooling rack, covered loosely with a clean kitchen towel, and cool completely before frosting.

Buttercream

• Prepare the Vanilla Buttercream as instructed. Use 1/2 the recipe for a 6-inch cake or the full recipe for an 8-inch cake.
• Baker’s Note: I highly recommend substituting vegetable shortening for half of the butter, for a whiter color to your buttercream, otherwise it will have a yellowish hue. You can also add a few drops of “bright white” gel food coloring to whiten the color.
• Stack, fill and frost the cooled cake layers with the buttercream, then frost all over with a thin crumb coat of buttercream. Refrigerate the cake for 30 minutes to chill the crumb coat.

Decorating

• Add the sprinkles to the remainder of the buttercream. Spread a final coat of buttercream onto the cake, making it as smooth or textured as you like.
• Baker’s Note: Adding the sprinkles to the buttercream makes the sprinkles look much more subtle. If you like a more bold sprinkle cake, save them to sprinkle on top of the final coat of buttercream.
• Finish decorating the cake with red, white and blue birthday candles on top.

Be sure to read all of my BAKING FAQs where I discuss ingredients, substitutions and common questions with cake making, so that you can be successful in your own baking! I also suggest reading these comprehensive posts on making Perfect American Buttercream, How to Stack, Fill, Crumb Coat and Frost Layer Cakes and How to Use Piping Bags.

Frequently Asked Questions

What brand of food coloring do you use?

I usually use Americolor gel food coloring.

Where do you get your candles?

I buy birthday candles wherever I see some I like, whether it’s at the grocery store, or at hobby and craft stores like Michaels, Joanne’s and Hobby Lobby. I also love Meri Meri brand of candles, as well as Caspari, which you can find on Amazon. These are some of my favorites:

• green, blue and white candles
• bright stripe party candles
• caspari red and gold birthday candles

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