The Genius Cake-Slicing Tip That Will Make Layered Desserts A Breeze
Layer cakes are both beautiful and perfectly proportioned, with just the right amount of icing and crumb in each bite. While it's easy enough to bake two separate cakes to stack on top of each other, you can also cut a single cake in half for the same effect. While the standard toothpick and dental floss hack for measuring and cutting cake layers has made the process easier for home chefs, the latest genius slicing tip is the lowest maintenance and fool-proof tip yet.
What makes this new hack so ingenious is that it requires only the equipment you'd need to make a layer cake; no need to look for a ruler or use a toothpick and dental floss for anything other than your teeth! For this tip, you'll need a long, serrated knife, a cake pan, a cooling rack, and cardboard cake circles typically used for packaging or plating the finished cake.
When your cake is cool enough to remove from the pan onto a cooling rack, you'll use the same cake pan as a leveler and measurement marker. Stacked cardboard cake circles bound by plastic wrap will serve as a platform for the cake. To execute the hack, you'll put the cake circles into the cake pan, placing the cake on top so half its length is exposed. Then, the rim of the pan acts as the guiding bumper along which you'll cut the cake into two even halves.
Final steps and more tips for easy cutting
After you've cut the cake into halves, you'll use the cooling rack to remove the freshly cut top layer by placing the rack on top and flipping the cake upside down. You'll repeat this step for the bottom half of the cake and cake circles, which you can then repurpose for storage, display, or as a tool for further decorating tips.
This ingenious hack comes from foodie influencer, chef, and cookbook author Dan Langan who artfully demonstrates each easy step on Instagram. He recommends wrapping the cake circles in plastic wrap to keep them clean for future use. Langan doesn't specify how many cake circles to stack to achieve the desired height and simply eyeballs the halfway point on the cake. If you don't trust yourself enough to make an educated guess, you can use a ruler to measure the height of the cake and divide it by half to determine how tall your makeshift platform should be.
If you don't have cake circles, you can use plastic plates, Tupperware tops, or any other flat-surfaced kitchenware small enough to fit inside the pan. Another helpful tip is to chill the cake in the fridge before cutting it into two layers. The chilling will solidify the cake crumb, making it easier to handle and cut. Plus, a cold cake will also make any frosting piping mistakes a lot easier to fix.