A Fourth Tradition

I'm not sure how long we have been making the USA cake, but it came from a 1997 Crayola Kids magazine. When I can find red hots we mark major cities, which usually include our latest National Park trip. The Mississippi River is over flowing its' banks due to flooding & Kate! Actually the icing was yucky, so it bled. Randy's the geography guy, but he takes no credit for how it turns out. He just enjoys eating it.

Here's the how-to:

2 boxes of white cake mix...I use 1 1/2 boxes and use 1 1/2 amounts of oil, water & eggs.

vanilla icing

green sugar (food coloring & sugar)

cinnamon sugar (cinnamon & sugar)

pecans

chocolate chips

Chocolate kisses

blue writing icing

Make your cake according to the package. Find a LARGE pan to bake it in. To make it easier to remove from the pan use cooking spray, then wax paper, then cooking spray on wax paper. Pour the batter on the "sprayed wax paper". Bake and let cool. Remove from pan and pull away the wax paper. I put my cake on a tupperware cake carrier, but you could just put it on a large platter. NOW, it's time to cut out the USA. I made my pattern by tracing a puzzle the kids have. The extra pieces that you cut away become Hawaii & Alaska...or that is what we call them. Ice your cake & let the decorating begin. You have grasslands, desert, mountains, rivers, lakes & cities (red hots, or other bright candy).

My kids LOVE making this cake. It's cheesy, but it's not the 4th without it. We have made this cake when we visited friends on the 4th! Alyssa is out of town visiting a friend & she texted me today about the cake. She told me not to eat it all. I told her we could make another when she came home to which she texted "YAY!".