If you’re like most Americans, you’ve been thinking about how you’ll celebrate the Fourth of July. Personally, I’ll be leaning on national treasure Ina Garten’s iconic flag cake, a festive (and more importantly, delicious) dessert that’s become a beloved annual tradition for her—and Taylor Swift to boot. While her fans await this year’s rendition with bated breath, let’s take a trip down memory lane and revisit the Barefoot Contessa’s recipe, which is something of a specialty for the chambray queen.
Ina Garten & Taylor Swift Make This Cake Every July 4th, So We Had to Try It
Let frosting ring
Updated Jul 2, 2025
•7:16pm
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Back in 2017, Garten posted the above video tutorial of the cake, saying on Instagram, “It’s a Fourth of July tradition! I’ve made so many flag cakes over the years and I’ve gotten really fast at decorating them!!” (Yep, she’s got jokes and pristine baking skills.)
And she’s not lying, either. Fast-forward to 2020, and the Contessa posted yet another version of her flag cake on the ’gram, this time for Memorial Day. “We may be stuck at home,” she wrote, “but we can still celebrate Memorial Day with a fabulous Flag Cake! It’s the perfect baking project with the kids. Or with anyone you love!” How much do you want to bet that she makes it again this year? I’m sure Jeffrey won’t mind a repeat.
After watching her zippy time-lapse video, I was convinced. The precision with which she places the blueberries and raspberries on the sheet cake is kind of...mesmerizing? And she definitely knows her way around an icing bag. (Something tells me that even if the video weren't time-lapsed, she’d have that cake looking patriotic in no time.)
Furthermore, PureWow contributor Becca Shapiro tried the cake herself, and can vouch for its deliciousness. "My mom used to make flag cakes when I was a kid—just a sheet cake with white icing and sliced strawberries for the red stripes and blueberries for the stars— so it's always felt to me like a necessary part of any July 4th celebration," she explains. "It's really not hard at all. The only fussy part is piping the icing, but if that's intimidating, you can absolutely skip that step. Just use white frosting for the cake, and then make stripes with the raspberries, and use blueberries for the corner. The white frosting will still peek through and look like stars and stripes. It's basically birthday cake with fruit on top, and, as Ina would say, what could be better than that?"
Fingers crossed my berry-coconut rocket pops turn out remotely as pretty. On that note, here are a few other recipes I’ll consider tackling on the big day (and serving ahead of Ina's iconic flag cake):
