Serve Cake In Uniform Pieces With This Simple Strip-Cutting Method

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Aesthetically-minded, sweet-toothed foodies: This one's for you. Few things are more disheartening than meticulously, laboriously crafting a visually stunning layer cake, only to have those clean layers mangled by a slicing hack job. Under the unforgiving blade, once-clearly-defined layers can crumble and meld into a mess (so much for all your attention to detail). Or, worse, in the excitement and distraction of a gathering, that cake can get miscalculatedly sliced into totally misshapen, different-sized pieces. Luckily, those days are over thanks to one non-traditional slicing technique.

The tip comes from a YouTube Short posted by Williams-Sonoma. To divide a round layer cake into perfectly tidy, uniform slices, start at the center and work your way out toward the edges. Effectively, the cake is cut into long rectangular strips instead of triangular wedges, starting from the cake's middle. It may seem counterintuitive to everything you know about cake-cutting, but trust us on this one. The results are worth enduring any initial discomfort from going against your familiar approach.

To do it, grab a long, lightly serrated knife (we also recommend slightly warming the knife to yield the tidiest slice). Then, eyeball the center line of the cake, and cut out a thick middle strip along that center line. This divides the cake into rough halves. Using a flat spatula, gently remove that long rectangular strip, transfer it to a plate or cutting board, then slice the strip into individual square servings. Next, press the remaining oblong half-circles of your round cake together to form an almost-circle. Rotate the cake so that the dividing line is oriented horizontally from you, then repeat the first step, cutting another thick center strip. The exact number of servings may vary based on the size of your cake, but this cut will yield clean, square slices, with the last four corners of the round cake remaining wedge-shaped and single-serving sized, forming a small circular perimeter of their own.

Pro tip: If you happen to have a cake-spinning turntable (like this one by the Kootek brand, $15.99 via Amazon), bust it out here. Not only is the turntable super useful for cake decorating, but it can also help confectioners rotate their cakes for the cleanest slicing and the prettiest presentation on the dessert table. We've also compiled seven more hacks for cutting cake you'll wish you knew sooner to help home bakers out.