Tutorial Tuesday: all-vegan Coca Cola Flag Cake

This tutorial is going to be filed under "very-obvious-duh" tutorials, much like last week's. Still, it is a fun little tutorial that is a family tradition every Fourth of July.

First, you may be wondering...what is Coca Cola® cake? Well, my friends, being as we live in Atlanta, we make recipes with this stuff. Our blood flows with it. In fact, Coke® is such a part of our culture that when we offer someone a drink we say, "What kind of Coke® would you like?" and that covers every form of carbonated substance from Orange soda to Sprite®!

Anyway, this is the recipe I used for the cake base. Since this tutorial is not revolving around the base of the cake, I'm just going to include the ingredients...sorry, no step-by-step instructions...just mix everything together in the order listed and then bake at 350 for 45 minutes:

2 1/2 cups flour
2 cups sugar
2/3 cups unsweetened cocoa powder
2 tsp baking soda
1 tsp salt
2 cups Coca Cola® (feel free to substitute with warm water if using coke in a recipe makes you squeamish!)
2 tsp vanilla extract
1/3 cup vegetable oil (or 2/3 cup oil and no applesauce)
1/3 cup applesauce (or 2/3 cup applesauce and no oil)
2 Tbsp distilled white or apple cider vinegar

{* Note: If you don't want to make that cake, you can use a brownie base or a cake-in-a-box cake! Whatever works it is just our family tradition to have a chocolate something...}

Take your "cake base" and allow it to cool. Once cool, flip it over onto a nice platter like so:

To make vegan frosting you can do a number of things (usually involving confectionery sugar). I chose to make cream cheese frosting so I used confectionery sugar and "Better Than Cream Cheese" by the makers of Tofutti.

The tofu cream cheese is a little hard so I let it sit out for a bit (around half an hour) before I work with it.

Scrape all the tofu cream cheese goodness into a mixer and start whipping it. From time to time, scrape down the edges so that all of the cream "cheese" gets uniformly whipped.

While that is in the mixer, wash your fruit. It is very very important that the fruit is dry by the time you place it on your cake...

While your fruit is drying, now is the time to add the sugar to the whipped cream "cheese". While the mixer is running, slowly add the confectionery sugar until you reach a thick liquid texture.

I like to continue to whip the sugar + cream "cheese" for a while longer--this ensures that it is fluffier and easier to spread. While that is mixing, cut up your strawberries. If they are big strawberries, cut them in fourths so that you have maximum red exposure with each slice. If they are on the smaller side, cutting them down the middle will suffice

Once you've finished slicing, that the frosting should be ready. Pour it over the cake base and gently covering the entire base with the frosting.

Wait about 5 minutes for the frosting to set. Go fold your laundry or write an email.

Okay...done?

Good--time to add the stars and stripes! Take your DRY blueberries and place them in the top left corner of the cake. Obviously, on a 9x13 cake, you will not be able to get 50 "stars" but you can pretend :)

Now, add the strawberries in rows, leaving space for the "white stripe"...again, you most likely will not get 13 stripes but you can try! and...now you are finished! yay!

Ta-Da! All-Vegan Coca Cola® Flag Cake!

Happy Fourth First of July Last Day of June! Thanks Holly Noelle!