Ten 4th of July Cake Ideas:
Creative Patriotic Themed Cakes!

I like this 4th of July cake idea if you're looking to make a healthier cake. This is a great way to, say, dress up an angel food cake or another lighter, lower fat cake. It's also nice with pound cake as a sort of mixed berry shortcake.

How to Make it: Put together your favorite layer cake, or cut an angel food cake or pound cake into layers and put whipped cream, Cool Whip, or frosting between the layers. Decorate the top of this red, white, and blue cake with strawberries, blueberries, and raspberries, being sure to let some of the white show, too. Serve chilled.

This hilarious summer cake is so cute, and surprisingly fun to make! It's one of my favorite 4th of July cake ideas, because it also translates well into any summer holiday or celebration.

How to Make it: The cake pictured is a sheet cake, but you can also use a round layer cake, if you like. Simply whip up your favorite cake recipe (any flavor) with white frosting. Color your frosting bright blue with food coloring. Frost your cake.

Grind up graham crackers in your food processor until very fine. Cover half of your frosted cake with graham cracker "sand" (the graham cracker tastes especially good if you use a cream cheese frosting). Decorate the cake with candies, paper umbrellas, and "Teddy Grahams" to create a fun beach scene.

Like this fun 4th of July cake idea? Here's a cupcake version of the same thing!

This is another silly 4th of July cake idea that doesn't really follow a strict patriotic theme... but it's perfect for a 4th of July picnic! Because it IS a picnic.

How to Make it: To put together this fun summer 4th of July cake, bake up a sheet cake with your favorite flavor of cake, and whip up a big batch (you'll need almost double the normal amount) of white frosting. Keep 1/4 of the frosting white, dye a 1/4 of it red, and dye the rest of it green.

On about half of the cake, use a simple decorator's tip to create a picnic blanket pattern of red and white squares. Create a little "paper plate" in one corner with white frosting. Using a "grass" cake decorators tip (like a Wilson Number 233), fill the rest of the cake in with green frosting grass.

To finish decorating this festive Fourth of July cake, fill your "paper plate" with mini sandwich cookies (mini Oreos work well!). Add a few gummy worms to your "grass" for effect, adding a little grass frosting over them so they look embedded.

Now, this is one of the easiest and most impressive 4th of July cake ideas for a patriotic theme. It's unbelievable that a cake this easy to make can look this cool.

How to Make it: Start with any flavor of layer cake with a white frosting. Cook, cool, and frost as instructed by your basic cake recipe. Purchase one tube of red gel decorator's frosting, and one tube of blue.

To make the "fireworks," create different-sized concentric spiderweb-like circles on top of the cake in your red and blue gel. Using a toothpick, gently drag through the points in your "web" all the way to the center, to make a firework/web shape.

To make this a really red, white, and blue cake, cover the sides of your completed cake in red, white, and blue sprinkles.

This is such a fun idea for a red, white, and blue patriotic cake... and because you don't actually have to create the stars directly ON the cake, it's also pretty fool-proof.

How to Make it: Make up your favorite flavor of layer cake with a white frosting. Cook, cool, and frost as instructed. To make the red and blue stars, look online for a simple recipe for royal icing, a hard frosting made with egg whites that dries candy-hard. Color half of your royal icing red, and half blue.

Using a decorator's tip, pipe your royal icing into star shapes on a piece of waxed paper. Refrigerate until hard. Remove from waxed paper.

Decorate your cake as desired with your red and blue candy stars. Add red, white, and blue sprinkles for a cheerful 4th of July cake with a patriotic theme.

This is one of my favorite 4th of July cake ideas, because it's patriotic both on the inside, and on the outside! The version pictured here is a tube-type cake, but you can also do this with a layer cake.

How to Make it: Whip up the batter for a white cake and divide your batter into three parts. Keep one part plain, and add a LOT of red food coloring to one part, and blue to the other.

Poor the red colored batter into the bottom of your greased and floured tube pan, and gently coat the sides. Pour the white batter on top of the red, being careful not to allow them to mix. Pour in the blue last of all. Bake as directed by your recipe.

Frost with a white frosting of your choice, and top with raspberries or sliced strawberries and blueberries.

If you like this idea, you'll also like this simpler version, a "Patriot on the Inside" Cake.

Who says that all cake ideas for a patriotic theme have to start with a white cake? After all, some of us --most of us, actually!-- prefer chocolate!

How to Make it: This cake starts with your favorite recipe for chocolate cake with chocolate frosting, and a bit of white decorator's frosting dyed white, red, and blue.

Bake your chocolate cake as instructed by your recipe, but use a star-shaped cake pan. Cool and frost. Decorate as desired with red, white, and blue frosting. This one say "Happy Birthday America!" but you can do anything you like.

How about a 4th of July cake idea that isn't even a cake? This is a great way to decorate a different dessert --in this case a trifle-- for a patriotic 4th of July theme.

How to Make it: Make your favorite recipe for a trifle. For this recipe, I love this strawberry cheesecake trifle. It's also great with a Death by Chocolate Brownie Trifle. Be sure that the top layer of your trifle is a white whipped-cream-based layer.

Decorate the top of your trifle with raspberries, strawberries, and blueberries. Here a piece of pound cake is cut into a star shape with a cookie cutter to decorate the middle. You could also use a piece of brownie, a thin slice of watermelon cut into a star, or a slice of star fruit.