Military Cake

My brother just celebrated his 15th birthday. He is in the JROTC at his high school and really enjoys it, so I decided to make him a military cake. He requested a marble cake for his birthday, so I used half yellow cake and half chocolate cake. I used the Cake Mixes From Scratch and Variations recipe from allrecipes.com.

INGREDIENTS:
2 1/3 cups all-purpose flour
1 Tbs baking powder
3/4 tsp salt
1 1/2 cups sugar
1/2 cup shortening
2 eggs
1 cup milk
1 tsp vanilla extract
2 Tbs cocoa powder
Special Buttercream Frosting

DIRECTIONS:
Sift together flour, baking powder, salt, and sugar. Cut in shortening until fine crumbs are formed. Add eggs, milk, and vanilla. Beat at low speed for 1 minute, then high for 2 minutes, scraping the bowl frequently. Pour half of the batter into a smaller bowl and add 2 heaping tablespoons of cocoa powder. Blend thoroughly.

Spoon batter randomly into 2 greased and floured 9" round pans. Cut through the batter with a knife, making swirling patters to "marble" the cake. Bake in preheated 350° oven for 25 to 30 minutes.

CREDIT: Submitted by "Nancy Dorman" on Allrecipes.com

DECORATE:
To decorate the cake, I divided the Special Buttercream Frosting and tinted it using Wilton Gel Icing Color. I used a pair of Hubby's camo pants to try to match the colors for the camo as close as I could.

Using a star tip, I covered the cake with piped stars, much like you would do for a Wilton character shaped pan. This method makes it look like you spent a ton of time on it, but it's actually relatively quick and easy. The most time-consuming part of decorating the cake was tinting the icing.