Easy Red, White and Blue Cake

Sure, we have all heard of red velvet cakes

(here's a little history just in case you care to read up on red velvet cakes)

but have you seen the new colors of velvet cakes now

available all boxed up and ready for you to bake? 

The Duncan Hines company has come out with their

"Summer Velvets" that make it easy for you to make a

multi-color cake with only one box of mix to buy.

I don't have any association with the Duncan Hines company. I just thought

this looked like a fun cake to try and pass along the results of my amateur baking to you.

Before I had seen the box in the grocery store, I did not

know that they had also had a Spring Velvet boxed mix 

with pink and yellow velvet mixes in one box. 

Here are the directions for making the multi-color cake.

Some folks like to alter the boxed cake mixes to make them taste more like home-made but I am

just going to go by the directions exactly to see how this cake turns out this first time. 

The cake mixes are individually wrapped.

The look kind of pale while they are dry in the plastic. 

Their color comes out when the moist ingredients

are added.  You mix the colors one at a time. 

Blue is first.

Two eggs per layer...mix two minutes...sounds like a lot

but we are going "by the book".  Maybe that's were the

"velvet" texture come from.

Here are the blue and the red cake batters in their

greased and floured pans...

...and here they are after baking for 35 minutes...

The picture on the front of the box was accurate in that

it does not show a huge cake out of one box.  

It's a very cute cake and one that folks will delight over 

when they cut into it and see more than one color of 

cake under that white icing. 

I had seen tall ombre' cakes and rainbow cakes on Pinterest

however and wanted to try to make this red, white and blue

cake a little more impressive than just two layers.  I had

purchased another box of the "Summer Velvets" just in 

case I wanted to give the taller cake a try. 

Here are the first two layers after cooling and

them coming out of the pans...

...and then here are four layers (two boxes of the mixed mix).

The cakes had kind of a "skin" on the tops and bottoms.

I wasn't sure whether or not to try to take that off.

I used a serrated knife to gently peel it off in some places.

If I made these cakes again, I would peel more of it off.

In case you are wondering, you don't have to completely

clean every speck of blue mix off of the bowl and utensils

between colors.  It did not affect the color of the red cake.

In order to keep this cake in the "easy" category, I did not

try to level the cakes.  They were not hugely domed but

did have a flat side (bottom) and a raised side (top). 

To compensate (and try to keep the top of the stacked 

cake as flat as possible)  I placed the tops  facing each

 other and filled in the resulting gap with a jar of Duncan

 Hines ready-made cream cheese frosting

 (which is what the cake box recommended for this cake).

Pieces of wax paper are under the bottom layer of cake

to try to help me keep the icing off of the cake plate.

They will be pulled out when the icing phase is over. 

If you make the cake with one box of mix, your cake will

be about 3" tall.  Like I said before, very cute and fun. 

I would not have left the cake like this.  I considered this

the "crumb coat" since I was going to be adding layers. 

This photo is to show the approximate size of one box. 

I used a lot of icing filling in that gap to make the top

flat.  One can of icing would probably be fine to cover

this two-layer cake if you don't do the top-to-top method. 

In the past, I have had the unhappy experience of a tall cake's

layers sliding apart while being transported to a party in a car.

To avoid that experience again, I pushed three bamboo 

skewers (available in your grocery store) down through

the layers.   When the skewer hits the cake plate, pull it 

up a little, cut it off, then push it back down into the cake.

You don't want it sticking up out of the cake at all.

The top layer of the tall cake had the rounded side up since no other layers were being added. 

The four-layer cake measured 6" tall.  I used 3 cans

of the cream cheese icing to cover the cake (probably because

of those side gaps).  If I were making this cake again, I would

use 4 cans and put more white icing between the layers. 

I didn't worry too much about getting icing on the sides 

of the cake smoothed out perfectly...it's a fun cake and 

not a wedding cake.  I would rate it "easy".

The total cost for the four-layer cake was about

 $10 (2 boxes cake mix, 3 tubs of icing, eggs and butter). 

A cute embellishment for a cake that I have seen on 

Pinterest and wanted to try is to add a pennant topper. 

To make a mini-pennant banner just fold over a section

 of colored paper and cut pennant shapes  (with the 

fold being the wide part of the pennant). For this cake

five pennants were used.  They were about 1" wide

and 2" long.  You can vary the size for the look you want.

 Place the pennant fold on a piece of string.

Glue the inside of the pennant together. 

Do this five times placing pennants close together. 

Tie the string onto two bamboo skewers.

Poke the skewers in the cake. 

A 6" cake doesn't sound very tall does it? 

A footed cake stand and this pennant topper will 

make it look taller than that. 

OK! Now for the really fun part...cutting the cake!

Everyone at the party will be impressed to see 

your fabulous red, white and blue cake revealed!

Don't plan on using dainty dessert plates for this cake

if you make the four-layer version.

It tastes really good! I could not tell a difference in

the flavor between the red cake and the blue cake.

Duncan Hines also makes a boxed version of just the

blue velvet cake by itself for a two layer cake.

Wouldn't that be great for a boy baby shower? 

Until the cake got pressure from the knife cutting down

through the layers, the sides were fine.  After the cake

cutting started, there were little bulges of icing between

the layers (the gap filling trick exposed).

If you think that might bother you, making the icing

firmer might keep this from happening.

Donna at "A Slice of Heaven" says that you can mix

1/4 cup of confectioner's sugar with a tub of room

temperature pre-made icing/frosting to make it stiffer. 

 Or you could level the cakes before frosting them. 

Or use decorating icing instead of cream cheese icing.

 Actually NOBODY at the gathering I took

 the cake to seemed to notice bulges of icing...

only the fun surprize of multi-color layers in one

cake and the good taste of it all together!

Get ready for the "ooohs" and "ahhhs" when you make

this "Summer Velvet" cake any size. 

Easy Inexpensive Shell Wreath

When I was looking for easy and inexpensive wreath ideas

that I could make for my hospital's March of Dimes fundraiser

I saw this wreath at Pier One...

 sorry this is not a good photo...I was trying to be sneaky and take a photo with my cell phone.

I already had some shells left over from summer decorating

and I knew I could buy a twig wreath at Jo Ann's craft

store with a coupon.  The Pier One wreath is white but I 

kind of like the natural color myself...you could always

spray paint the wreath before adding shells if you wanted. 

The wreath that I made for the fundraiser only cost me

$7.50 since I already had the shells and glue.

You could use hot glue if you want to to add the shells to

the wreath but since this one was being actually sold

(in a sense) I did not want the shells falling off later on

(as hot glued items can tend to do) in the Alabama heat. 

Here is how the wreath for the raffle turned out...

Here it is being shown at a table we had set up to show

the wreaths and sell raffle tickets...

Here is its collage for a kinda-sorta catalog of wreaths

that were in the wreath raffle...

The shell wreath generated good sales for the raffle and

the winner was thrilled to have her name drawn for it. 

One lady who did not win the wreath said that she HAD 

to have one and I liked it too so I made a couple more

since they are so easy and inexpensive. 

Two wreaths, two shell bags and one glue tube later

I'm ready to go again to make more shell wreaths.

You may have shells from a beach trip and not even have to buy any! If you need shells for this
project, Hobby Lobby and Dollar Tree have good deals on bags or baskets of shells. 

I got all the supplies with coupons from Jo Ann's, Michaels

and Hobby Lobby.  The wreaths are regularly $12, the shells

$12, and the glue $5.  I could have done both wreaths with

one shell bag I realized later. Even with buying the shells and

 glue this time around each wreath only cost $15 with coupons.

This glue made by Goop is really great.  It goes on and dries

clear.  It does not dry instantly but after a couple of hours it

has "grabbed" the item well enough that you can add other

things on top of it. That is the trick to using this glue (that,

I think, will hold the shells on the wreath long-term) is to

layer the shells, letting each layer dry before adding more.

I'm sure there are other glues in the craft stores that would work well too for this project. 

Because the shells are all unique, each shell wreath will

have its own personality too.  

I did not have the large scallop shells for these wreaths that

I did for the first one but I think they turned out pretty in

their own way.  On this wreath a layer of medium-size

scallop shells was added close to the wreath opening.

After the glue dried a couple of hours on those,
 smaller scallop shells were added to fill in blank spots.  

With a somewhat solid center ring finished, snail-looking 

shells were added to start another ring of shells. 

The tricky/challenging/fun part of this wreath is to find 

the places on the shell that is actually going to touch the 

 twig wreath or another shell to know where to put
 the glue so that the shell has a place to stick to. 

I tend to like symmetry, so I more or less got a little

pattern going of different shells around the ring but you

can add whatever shells you have in whatever fashion.

If you can leave the wreath on a table and go back to it

every couple of hours to add more glued shells, it will 

be finished in less than a day. 

Because my front door is brown and the glass "reads" as
dark from the street, this natural color wreath does not 
show up well from the street.

  I does, however, look great on my light-colored brick
mantel where the whorls of the twig wreath can be seen
 and the amazing shells can be seen up close and appreciated. 

The third wreath also had its own "look" since the other
lady wanted a tiny bit of colored shells on her wreath.

This is after the first three "rounds" of shell gluing...

...and the finished product...

Most shell wreaths available for purchase START at

$50 (for a small one) and go up from there.  If you make

your own for $15 with coupons (or $30 without) you can 

give it the look that YOU want. Try it...you'll like it!