Day One Hundred Seventy: I Pledge Allegiance to Martha Stewart

My kids went back to school this week.  My oldest daughter started Pre-K, which besides teaching her lots of fundamental skills, is basically an excuse to have a ridiculous amount of fun every day.  Seriously, these pre-k teachers are like a child's personal cruise director.  :you have my eternal gratitude, ladies:

This week, the pre-k class is talking about the American flag and learning the Pledge of Allegiance.  So as a fun treat, I made Martha's Flag Cake.

Martha's version of the cake in question:

I saw this cake in MS Living years ago....and every summer on MarthaStewart.com every year since.  I have always been more than a little intimidated by this cake.  I could only imagine the utter mess I would make of all those stripes.  My version was destined to look like an impressionist-version of an American flag.  People would look at it, tilt their heads and say in unison, "Oh, it's supposed to be a flag!"

So my expectation of success was pretty low.

After making the two cakes, layering and icing them,  I started (very carefully) applying the raspberries and blueberries.  I piped a row of stars between each line using my trusty pastry bag.  After about ten minutes (seriously), I had this:

The icing could have been more skillfully applied (I won't be working as a pastry chef any time soon), but it turned out pretty, well.....pretty.  I was surprised.  I proudly turned in this assignment to my daughter's Pre-K teacher.  I'm pretty it went over well.  The platter came back empty.