Presidents’ Day comes but once a year. And while it sometimes gets cast aside as far as patriotic holidays go (can you blame poor Presidents’ Day for not having fireworks?!), this year how about making Presidents’ Day shine like the unique holiday it is? We’ve compiled the most innovative patriotic edible goodies we could find. And surprise — they’re not all desserts!

Elissa of the blog 17 and Baking  says that, while making a patriotic cake, she “didn’t want to mess around with blueberries and strawberries on the top.” She feels that’s overdone, and instead brought the colorful part of the cake inside using multiple layers of white cake and food coloring. We love her innovation and the effort she put into developing this recipe! We also can’t get enough of the cream cheese frosting.

While he was born on October 1st, creating a dish this Presidents’ Day in honor of America’s favorite peanut farmer, Jimmy Carter, is also an appropriate (and delicious!) way to spend the holiday. We found the creamy, peanut buttery recipe for “Jimmy Carter Pudding,” also known as “Presidents’ Pudding” at CD Kitchen.

Susan Russo, cookbook author and the Food Blogga, admits she’s not generally super jazzed about themed foods. But we’re glad she made an exception for this potato salad made with three different kids of spuds: “old fashioned white russet, delicate red-skinned taters, and sassy All-Blue potatoes (which are sometimes labeled purple Peruvian).” Yum!

Another delicious variant from the standard cookies/cupcake route is to go for cheesecake bars. They’re excellent for the flag pattern since they’re already white. All You recommends using blueberries and red jelly to pipe stripes across these great treats.

In 2009, design website Toxel recreated the flags of different countries using foods typically associated with those countries. How fun! It was done to promote the Sydney International Food Festival and raise awareness about all the great different cuisines out there. The results were amazing. We wonder what kind of flag they would have come up with for America (sadly left out of the collection). Any suggestions!?