1. Grease the 8 inch cake pans and lightly flour.

2. Prepare cake in a stand mixer.

3. Take out two cups of your batter and divide it equally into two separate bowls.

4. Color one with red gel coloring (such as AmeriColor) and the other with blue gel coloring.

5. Next fill your cake pan with your regular batter.

6. Add droplets of the red and blue batter randomly through out your cake batter.

7. Using a tooth pick simply swirl thru the droplets creating a random burst of color patter.

8. Repeat the process for the star cake.

9. Bake the cakes at 350 degrees for about 35 minutes, or until a toothpick inserted in center comes out clean.

10. Prepare the Swiss Meringue Buttercream.

11. Ice the cakes.

Decorating Details:

Swags:

For the cake swags, use a wide scalloped strip cutter to cut the modeling chocolate. Use red, white and blue modeling chocolate to create long ropes and lay them tight next to each other. Roll them into a single striped piece. Use the strip cutter to cut out the striped swags.

Rope Knots:

Using the red modeling chocolate, roll out long ropes and twist them together, starting from the middle, to create the rope knots. Repeat the process for the blue rope knots and make them slightly smaller. Attach them using a little bit of melted chocolate.

Stars:

Use star cutters in different sizes and cut them out of the modeling chocolate. Take floral wire and dip one end in melted chocolate and slide it into the star. You will also want to dip the other end in melted chocolate to coat the wire before places it in cake. You don’t want uncoated wire to be directly placed in the cake!

For the stars on the side of the cake, use silver dragée to create the star tails. NOTE: A dragée is a small silver ball for decorating cookies or a cake.

Borders:

For the top tier border use a bead border mold. For the bottom border, use a rick rack mold. Both boarders are Wilton molds.

Pin Wheels:

Use our premium wafer paper prints in the 4th of July motif. You can find the pattern pack in our online shop. Cut the pinwheels out of the edible wafer paper and glue the centers together using piping gel. A little melted chocolate helps secure the pinwheel to the decorative straw. Finish the front with a flower punched out of modeling chocolate and a little silver dragée.