Except instead of Apple pie it’s:

Red, White*, Blue and Chocolate Cake

nom nom nom

Okay, start with a basic cream cake:

• 1 c butter, softened
• 2 c sugar
• 5 eggs, separated
• 1 t vanilla
• 2 c flour
• 1 t baking soda
• 1 c buttermilk

Yes, that’s an Italian cream cake without the coconut.

Then add the red and the white:

• 1-2 cups strawberries, cleaned, stemmed and diced (fresh or frozen)
• 2 T sugar

• 1-2 cups blue berries (fresh or frozen)
• 2 T flour

Prep the berries!  Sprinkle the sugar on the strawberries and set aside.  Toss the blue berries in the flour and set aside.  (These should be in a bowl large enough to hold half a cake batter in addition to the berries.)

Prep 2 9″ round cake pans with some butter and flour and happiness**

Prep the batter like you would an Italian cream cake (without coconut, ofc)

Sift together the flour and soda, set aside.

Cream the butter, add the sugar, beat till fluffy, add the yolks and vanilla and mix until fully incorporated.  Well, maybe more of a partnership than a corporation.  There’s a very funny joke in this about piercing the veil of ownership, and eating the cake here somewhere, but I’ve decided this may not be the best venue for it.  Feel free to comment if you think of it.

Mix in the flour and buttermilk, doing that whole a little of this and a little of that until it’s all mixed in nice and well.  Set aside.

Beat the egg whites (you didn’t forget about them did you?) until they reach stiff peaks.  If you’re like me and only have one bowl for your mixer (because a second costs $50), that means you’ve had to put the regular batter in a separate bowl and thoroughly washed your mixer bowl because, egg whites.

Anyway, fold the batter into the egg whites together.

Pour half of the batter over your strawberries and half over your blue berries.  Fold each until there’s fewer clumps of berries at the bottom.

Now this is very important.  Put the strawberry batter in one cake pan and blueberry batter in the other.  If you don’t and, say blend the two together, you end up with a purple cake.  Which is a whole ‘nother type of pride than patriotic pride.

Bake at 350 until done (25-40 minutes).

Remove, cool in pan for 10 minutes then turn out on a rack and cool completely.

Frosting TIME!

FROSTING time?

Whatever.

• 1 c cream cheese
• 1 c butter
• 1/2 c unsweetened cocoa (sifted)
• 3 c powdered sugar
• 1 t vanilla
• 1-3 T milk (depending on humidity)

Cream the cream cheese and the butter together until you secretly just want to take it in another room with a spoon.  I won’t tell anyone.  Slowly add in the sugar and cocoa and mix on low until the air around the bowl stops tasting like sugar.  Add vanilla and a little milk at a time while whipping the frosting together.  Start with 1 T and if the mixer is having difficulty add 1/2 T more until it doesn’t.  You may not need any depending on the humidity and your taste.

Place one layer of the cooled cake on what you want to serve the cake from.  Glob some frosting on it, and spread it out.  Place the other layer on top, and glob the rest of the frosting on top and spread it over the top and down the sides.

Remember, crumbs in your frosting means it was made with love.  All those crazy robots who can frost a cake without getting noticeable crumbs in the frosting don’t add love.

*White is debatable.  You might end up with some if you use fresh fruit, but frozen fruit will inevitably get their juices all over their cake layer.  Which is also good.  I mean what’s the point of white on the flag?  Purity and Innocence?   Bah, who needs that.

**Happiness at this point is optional.