4th of July Cake

This Fourth of July, Danger is my middle name and I made a cake shaped like a giant cupcake; red, white, and blue inside and out.

It's a delicious funfetti-style cake, blue and white at the base, and red velvet on top. There's vanilla pudding in the middle. It's then covered with a blend of cream cheese and buttercream white frostings, fresh raspberries and blueberries, and star-shaped pieces of young coconut.

Patriotism is delicious!

Make the cake batter according to the box (or your favorite cake recipe).

Divide cake batter into thirds.
Dye one blue and another one red using food coloring.
Since the red one is likely to look more pink than anything, add some cocoa powder. Congratulations, now you've made red velvet! (Loosely.)

Pour blue, then pour white batter into the bottom mold.
If you're feeling fancy, try layering red and white for the bottom layer. That would be cool! We didn't do that.
Pour the remaining color into the top mold.
Bake.

We made vanilla Jell-O pudding. You can do something fancier if you want. You could do whipped cream and mix berries in. We didn't do that, either, but it sure would be cool!

Let it chill for a while. DON'T put it into your cake while it's still really hot, or it will make a mess (trust me, I tried it).

Carve out the center of your cake to make room for the pudding.

Fill it up! Put the top on top.

Frost it all closed. We frosted the top white with cream cheese frosting, then mixed cocoa powder, red, and a little bit of blue (to darken) the buttercream frosting we used around the base.

Place raspberries and blueberries on the cake.

Open your young coconut. Drain out the milk, then carefully peel the soft meat in sections as large as you can. Use the star-shaped cookie cutter to cut coconut stars.

Put any leftover fruit on the plate.

Pretty!

Hooray! Happy 4th of July!

(Or if you're Chilean, and using this recipe because your flag is also red, white, blue, stars, happy September 19th!)