by Linette Gerlach

One yummy tradition for our 4th of July celebration is our annual Flag Cake. I thought it would be fun to put a new twist on an old tradition this year and make a Cupcake Flag. Regular size cupcakes seemed too large, so I used mini cupcakes to make this Mini-Cupcake Flag. It turned out great!

This is a fun dessert for kids and the adults. Mini desserts are very popular, so I predict the Mini–Cupcake Flag will be a hit. 

Mini-Cupcake Flag

Ingredients:

Instructions:

1. Bake the mini cupcakes, according to the package instructions. I used 88 mini-cupcakes for this cake, but this recipe is very flexible. You can make your Mini-Cupcake Flag larger or smaller, depending on your needs. 1 box cake mix will make plenty of mini-cupcakes for this project

2. While the cupcakes are cooling, cover your bar pan, or sheet of cardboard with cake foil. Wrap it across the top, and tape the edges of the foil to the bottom of the pan (or cardboard) to hold it in place

3. Once your mini-cupcakes have baked and cooled, lay them out in rows to create a rectangle. I used I made 8 rows that were 11 cupcakes wide

4. Before frosting anything, plan out how you are going to create your stars and stripes. The stars will go in the upper-right corner. I used 5 cupcakes across (wide) and 5 cupcakes down (long) to make my stars section

5. Put a tiny dollop of icing on the bottom of each cupcake to hold it in place on the cake board
 

6. Divide the remaining icing into thirds. You’ll need between 1 to 1 ½ cups for each color

7. Color your frosting:

9. Top the blue cupcakes with white star sprinkles. Put 4 or 5 sprinkles on each mini-cupcake

10. Ice every other row of the remaining cupcakes with the white icing, using a pastry bag and the Wilton # 21 decorator tip. Use the same circular motion to ice the cupcakes
 

11. Ice the remaining rows (using the same circular motion to ice each cupcake) with the red icing, a pastry bag, and the Wilton #21 decorator tip

Amazing Mom’s Tip

You can adapt this cupcake flag to fit any size base, depending on the size of the crowd you are going to feed.