This flag cake made with fresh farmers market berries and fair trade sugar (regular and powdered) was definitely the highlight of our Fourth of July celebrations and the next couple of days! What's for dinner? Who cares, as long as there's still cake! We got the recipe from Smitten Kitchen and just "fair traded" it by using fair trade sugars and vanilla. You could look for fair trade berries at your local grocery if you wanted too, but we opted for local berries since they're in season right now.
The recipe itself was pretty easy, with not too many ingredients and it's not too sweet since the frosting is cream cheese based. We also opted for an old school flag design because our blueberries were on the large side and we couldn't exactly fit all 50 stars, but we did manage to squeeze all 13 stripes! This cake is certainly worth the effort, and really wasn't too hard. We will definitely be making it again next year!
Cake
- 2 sticks (1 cup, 1/2 pound or 225 grams) unsalted butter, softened
- 2 cups (400 grams) Wholesome Sweetener Fair Trade sugar
- 4 large eggs, at room temperature
- 2 teaspoons (10 ml) fair trade pure vanilla extract
- 4 cups (465 grams) cake flour or 3 2/3 cups (460 grams) all-purpose flour plus 1/3 cup (45 grams) cornstarch
- 2 teaspoons (10 grams) baking powder
- 1 teaspoon (5 grams) baking soda
- 1 teaspoon (6 grams) table salt
- 2 cups buttermilk (475 ml), well-shaken
Frosting
- 8-ounce (225 gram) block cream cheese, at room temperature
- 1/2 cup (1 stick or 1/4 pound) butter, at room temperature
- 1 teaspoon (5 ml) fair trade vanilla extract
- 2 to 3 cups (240 to 360 grams) Wholesome Sweetener powdered sugar
Decoration
- Wholesome Sweetener fair trade Powdered sugar
- 1 cup blueberries (1/2 pint, about 170 grams), very dry
- 3 cups raspberries (1 1/2 pints, about 360 grams), very dry