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Easy Fourth of July Desserts
Whether you are hosting a few friends, going to a picnic, or hanging at home celebrate little red, white, and blue with easy fourth of July desserts. I love how colorful these desserts are without adding any food coloring, using the natural colors of these summertime fruits. This quick mixed fruit tart uses store-bought pastry puff dough, although you could use homemade of course. One of my favorite cakes is this cream cheese bunt cake with raspberries and blueberries on the side. This cake does take a few hours so I would make it the morning of. If you’re into regular layer cakes you can also decorate with berries and buttercream for a patriotic dessert.
Mixed Fruit American Flag Tart
This tart definitely falls into the category of an easy fourth of July desserts. To make this fruit tart you only need a few simple ingredients:
- Frozen Store bought Pastry Puff Sheet, put in the fridge to thaw the night before
- Small Container of Strawberries
- Small Container of Blue Berries
- 2 Granny Smith Apples
- White Sugar for Sprinkling or Honey
- Egg for Egg Wash
Instructions:
- Preheat your oven to 400 degrees and prepare a cookie sheet with parchment paper.
- Pull your thawed pastry puff sheet from the fridge and place it on a lightly floured counter.
- Using a rolling pin, roll out the sheet to a rectangle that will fit on your baking sheet and smooth out seams.
- Transfer the dough to your cookie sheet covered with parchment.
- With a knife score the dough in a rectangle about 3/4 of an inch in from the outside edge. (you can see if the photos above)
- Use a fork to prick holes all over the inside of your scored rectangle to keep the center from puffing up. (you can see in the photos above)
- Cut strawberries in thin slices and arrange on your dough for your stripes.
- Cut the green apples in thin slices and arrange in between your strawberries. You may want to leave a small gap from the other fruits to help keep the red from bleeding into the white.
- Score a square with a knife where your blueberries are going just as you did with the outside border.
- Place blueberries using smaller ones to fill in the left corner.
- With a spoon sprinkle a tablespoon or so of sugar on the tart or drizzle with honey
- Scramble an egg in a small bowl and using a brush, brush on egg wash to outside dough border of the tart.
- Bake for about 25 minutes when the pastry is golden brown on the edges.
- You can drizzle with a little more honey if desired and serve immediately warm or can be made earlier in the day and served room temperature. You can also make the morning off and warm in the oven later before serving. Do know that some of the red and blue can seep into the apples while cooling.
Cream Cheese Pound Cake with Berries
I love this pound cake and its so easy to add some red and blue berries for a patriotic dessert. I’m not a huge fan of frosting and its one less step, so this cake is a win for me. To make this cake you will need some time as it does take 1 hour and 40 minutes to bake, however, it is easy to make and put together. The recipe I love is from Elizabeth’s Edible Experience.
Red White and Blue Berry Cake
Although this cake is a little more work having to make the frosting, using berries on vanilla buttercream is an easy way to decorate a cake with red white, and blue and give it a little something extra. Generally, if I’m making layered cakes like this I just buy a box of cake mix. It’s easy and yummy and I still consider it homemade. I do think that making the frosting, is completely worth making from scratch. I used a simple vanilla buttercream recipe and used a piece of parchment to press and smooth the buttercream but of course, you could do swirls or just smooth with your knife. Then I added washed berries to decorate for another easy fourth of July desserts.
If you’re looking for a 4th of July dessert that’s a little more difficult you can check out my patriotic red white and blue macarons post. I hope everyone stays safe and enjoys their holiday weekend with a little extra dessert.
Individual Rainbow Crepe Cakes
Being the last day of pride month, I thought what better time to share this fun and colorful rainbow crepe cake. When I made this cake, it was just meant as an alternative birthday cake for my sister and nothing more. I am happy to be sharing this now during a time where people are paying homage, and also continuing to fight for inclusivity regardless of race, sex, and sexual or gender identities.
Since we are still in the midst of the coronavirus I decided to make individual cakes for 2 or a larger for 3 people. I made the cakes and gave them in advance to my family members in individual boxes, passing off with social distancing. That evening we were able to have cake together and celebrate via Zoom.
Making the Crepes and Whipped Cream Frosting
Crepe Batter
Most of the basis for these cakes came from Indulge with Mimis 30 Layer Crepe cake. I highly recommend her site! You can follow her step by step instructions and make this larger cake and use her crepe recipe. Although, I did make it the day before and used her whipped cream frosting recipe I did use a different simpler recipe for the crepes from delish.
Colors and Cooking
After making the batter I found a small gravy ladle that seemed to make consistently the size of crepes I wanted which was about 2.5-2.75″ to fit in my three inboxes. Then I divided the batter recipe into two and used food coloring to make two colors so I had to make a few batches of crepe batter to get all the colors. Since I was making a few small cakes, this made enough for two of each color, so 12 crepes all together in each cake. You can make more or fewer layers or colors depending on your preferences and how much batter you want to make.
Assembling the Rainbow Crepe Cakes and Individual Boxes
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Red White and Blue Macarons
Holiday celebrations are a little different this year. Perhaps spending the weekend with close family instead of big backyard bashes. Even though it’s just the two of us grilling at home in order to continue to social distance, it doesn’t mean we can’t get some patriotic desserts on the table. I thought what better and delicious way than making a batch of red, white, and blue macarons for the perfect memorial day desserts.
Making These Macarons
Over the last few months I’ve made many batches on macarons, some very much fails but I’ve begun to get used to the things it takes for me to get a good batch. The recipe I use is from indulgewithmimi.com. I like that her recipe is for a smaller batch which is great when you’re using more then one color and if your doing some testing and don’t want to end up with more then a baking sheet of failed macarons. She has countless vidoes and tricks for making french macarons that I have found really helpful. She also has a great trouble shooting guide.
When I make macarons I do use these silicone mats. I was able to make one batch all red and then I made a batch with no food coloring. After I was just about done with my macaronage (combining the wet and dry ingredients) I put about a third in a bowl and added some blue food coloring creating three piping bags of my red white and blue. To get my blue with white stars, I piped my blue macarons first then used my white batter with a very fine tip to carefully pipe my stars. If you have white star sprinkles that would work great as well.
Flavors
I decided to keep it pretty simple on my macaron flavors. I did not flavor any of the actual cookie portion and only the fillings. The white macarons I filled with a birthday cake buttercream. To do this I make a smaller batch of buttercream frosting and then add about a quarter of a cup of storebought boxed funfetti cake mix to the frosting. This may make the frosting thick and require more liquid to thin it out. The blue is a chocolate ganache, microwaving chocolate chips in heavy cream until melted. I then cooled the ganache in the fridge few a minutes at a time until it was thick enough to pipe onto the macarons.
The red macarons I decided to be what I’m calling chocolate covered strawberries. I find using plain jam in a macaron, especially if stored in a row the jam can leak out and be a bit messy. To help counter this I like to put a border a thicker filling to help keep the jam in. You could use buttercream but since I had leftover ganache I decided to pipe the border with that and then pipe in the strawberry jam in the middle.
I hope you have a wonderful memorial day making some sweet patriotic desserts of your own.