4 or 5, Pastry bags or large parchment cones (One for each color: red, white, red and yellow. If not using a coupler where you can change the tip for the white, you'll need an extra bag) Note: Using parchment bags for colored buttercream is recommended, so you can throw them away after use. Otherwise your good pastry bags could be stained from the food coloring.
3 - size 17 or 18 star tips
1 - size 199 star tip
You can use any tips for decorating, the tips suggested, are the ones shown on the cake above. You can also use royal icing to create the stars using a #16 tip. Make sure to buy professional good quality food coloring otherwise your blue and red color will be pastel.
The night before, prepare the Tinted Buttercream Icing. It has to sit overnight so the colors can mature and darken
Bake the cake and let cool.... When the cake is cool, place it on a cake board. If your cake is uneven on top, cut off that portion on your cake to make it even. Flip the cake over and use the bottom as your top.
Before icing the cake.... Soak a pastry brush in the simple or sugar syrup and dab it lightly onto the cake. This keeps the cake moist. If you prefer you could also add some liquor to your syrup.
Ice the cake using a spatula... Even though the cake will be covered with the flag design, the cake still needs an undercoating of icing, otherwise the star design will be hard to decorate. The undercoating layer of icing doesn't need to be perfect, as it will not be visible after we piped the flag, but try to get is as even as possible. If the icing is not smoothing out clean your spatula and wet with water. This will smooth it down.
Determine the flag size.... The size of your cake will determine how to calculate the width of your stripes. Using a ruler, measure the width of your cake and divide the total number of inches by 13. Mark each section for the 13 stripes.
In the left corner of the cake measure a 3 x 4 box. Use the ruler as your guide by indenting the cake with your ruler. If you have access to a flag cake pan, then use it.
Start piping...... Using your red icing, begin piping small stars very close together in two rows (you may need to make another row depending on your measurements) to make a red stripe.
Now do the same thing using the white icing bag. Continue the different color piping all the way up the cake leaving the 3 x 4 box untouched.
Using the blue icing, begin piping rows closely together to fill the entire 3 x 4 box.
Using the yellow icing, you will be evenly distributing 50 stars on top of the blue icing. There are 10 columns of 5 stars each. Pipe the first row of 5 stars. Using the first row of stars as your guide, pipe the second row of stars under, but between the first row.
