Strawberry Shortcake Flag Cake

Since I didn't really follow a "recipe" when making this cake, I just posted the picture w/o recipe instructions. I made it on Sunday (the 4th of July) and brought it to a dinner with some friends. It got rave reviews and I thought about posting a recipe for it, but then tonight when one of the friends told me that she was so full from eating so much of my cake that she couldn't eat anything until 1pm the next day, I thought, okay, I'm posting this! :)

As usual, I didn't do much measuring of anything... but I do remember what I did. So here goes:


1 box white cake mix, plus eggs & oil to prepare
8 oz brick cream cheese, softened
4 T (1/2 stick) butter, softened
up to 1/2 c milk
powdered sugar (you will need less than one 2 lb. bag)
about 50 blueberries
1 lb strawberries
2 T white sugar
1/3 c shortening
Cool whip (or whipped cream)


Prepare one regular white cake mix into a 9x13 pan. Once it has been out of the oven for about 10 minutes, carefully dump it out of the pan upsidedown onto a cooling rack. May I recommend Pam for Baking! It's even better than regular Pam; has a little flour in it and is especially for greasing cake pans.


Prepare your berries: Wash, hull, and thinly slice all strawberries. Take about half of them and put into a small mixing bowl. Mix 2 T sugar into them and set aside. We'll use those for the inside of the cake. For the remaining strawberry slices, spread them out on paper towels to absorb their moisture. These are the ones we'll put on top for the stripes. Rinse blueberries and set on paper towels too.


With a hand mixer, mix 8 oz softened cream cheese with 1/2 stick of softened butter. Add 1 tsp vanilla and a splash of milk (2-3 T). Once that's well-blended, add some powdered sugar until it's a good consistency for spreading. I would say 2-4 cups; just keep adding 1/2 cup at a time until you like the consistency.


Now we're going to split the cake. You'll need a very sharp, very long knife for this. I like to put the top side down on a 9x13 cake, so I put the whole (cooled) cake upside down on my serving board, the carefully cut off the top layer and move it (with both hands underneath for support and spreading out your fingers so it doesn't break!) to another surface.


Evenly spread about HALF of your cream cheese frosting on the inside of your cake (split layer). On top of the frosting, spoon your macerated strawberries (that means they've been soaking in their own juices & sugar and getting nice and juicy for you) evenly. Don't let the berries & juice go too close to the edges. Go ahead and spoon all the strawberry juice on there; it will only make the cake more yummy! Carefully place the other half of your split cake on top of the berries.


Now, you'll need some more frosting to cover the whole cake. Starting with your leftover cream cheese frosting, add about 1/3 c shortening and mix well. Add 1-2 T milk. Add some more powdered sugar (maybe 1-2 cups) until it's the consistency of a nice buttercream.


At this point I decided I wanted the frosting to be lighter... in color and in consistency. So I folded in about 1/3 to 1/2 a tub of Cool Whip to the buttercream/cream cheese frosting. After doing that, frost the entire outside of the cake.


Refrigerate for at least a couple of hours before serving, AND... shortly before serving, make your stars and stripes with your berries. I had drained my sliced strawberries on paper towels but they still bled by the time of the party; I'd put them on about two hours beforehand.


So there you have it! It was very yummy.