Ina Garten Demonstrates How to Make Her Famous Flag Cake for Memorial Day Weekend
The ‘Barefoot Contessa’ star originally shared the berry-covered cake in her 2002 cookbook, ‘Barefoot Contessa Family Style’
Ina Garten/Instagram; Amanda Edwards/WireImage
Ina Garten shared a sweet reminder ahead of the long weekend.
On Thursday, May 23, the host of Be My Guest with Ina Garten posted her iconic berry-clad flag cake recipe on Instagram, with a heartfelt message about Memorial Day.
“Memorial Day is not just a day off from work; it’s a time to remember all the people who sacrificed their lives serving our country. Isn’t a flag cake a great way to honor them?” the Barefoot Contessa star wrote in the caption.
She added, “It’s big and dramatic and you can give everyone a piece to take home!”
The clip is a time-lapse video showing the steps of decorating the dessert but the full recipe, which is from her 2002 cookbook Barefoot Contessa Family Style, can be found on Garten’s website. It is a vanilla sour cream sheet pan cake topped with a cream cheese buttercream frosting. The festive nature comes from its flag design made with piped frosting, blueberries, and raspberries.
PEOPLE has featured several flag cakes over the years, like Gaby Dalkin’s version which uses a brownie as the base and Sally McKenney Quinn’s cake that has rows of banana slices for the white stripes.
Garten, whose memoir Be Ready When the Luck Happens comes out on Oct. 1, frequently recirculates her recipes around their respective holidays and shares cooking tips on Instagram.
Back in February, Garten shared her secret for making “flavorful, moist” chicken: slightly “undercook” it.
“Everybody always asks, ‘How do you make chicken that’s not dry?’ And there are two really important things,” Garten said in the clip. “First, I slightly undercook it. If you overcook chicken it gets very dry. And then I let it rest.”
While some fans were wary of the cooking tip, Garten clarified that the chicken continues to cook under aluminum foil. The heat from the mostly-cooked protein is trapped inside the aluminum foil, so it will continue to reach a safe temperature while even outside the oven.
“The chicken keeps cooking and all the juices get back into the chicken,” she explained. “You won’t believe what a difference it makes.”
