Excuse Me, But Apparently We’ve Been Cutting Cake Wrong Our Whole Lives
Love or hate TikTok, it does come through with some interesting hacks, and for those who struggle to carve up a solid piece of sponge, this one’s for you.
If your anxiety wasn’t already through the roof from social interaction in the first place, being tasked with cutting a cake at a party will do the trick.
So many questions run through your mind: how many slices do I need from this cursed gateau? Why is this slice literally double the size of what I meant to cut? Why is everyone watching me?
Then you’re expected to serve your shaky handiwork, pulling out precarious triangles of flimsy cake and praying the skinny bits make it out whole — but they rarely do.
Well, according to TikTok user southern_living’s viral video, that’s because the triangular way is the wrong way if you’re after the ‘perfect slice every time’.
“Hate to break it to you, but you’ve been cutting cakes wrong your entire life. Here’s the mathematically correct way to do it,” she says.
“Instead of slicing on an angle like you would a pie, cut the cake in half first, then divide the halves into four equal sections”.
“You’ll then be able to cut eight even pieces from each side of the cake, instead of guessing how big the wedges are going to be”.
“This trick is used by wedding planners to get the most out of wedding cakes and has been proved by mathematicians as the right way to do it”.
These are big claims. The original video has been viewed over 3.7 million times (but has since been posted by other accounts where it’s amassed a few million again), so the comments were bound to be popping off.
The general theme? Picking apart everything southern_living says, starting with her statement that this technique is “mathematically correct”.
Multiple commenters pointed out that it is, in fact, incorrect because the slices all have different volumes and you can literally see from the video that the slices aren’t even. It only works on a square cake.
Plus, mathematically, you still have the same amount of cake no matter which way you choose to cut it – it’s a finite volume.
“Were the mathematicians drinking also?” one user asked.
Then they went after her comment about wedding planners using the technique. Bakers, wedding planners, caterers, cake decorators and opinionated randoms all united in saying, sweetie, no.
“I’ve been a cake decorator for 25 years and this is not the correct way to cut a wedding cake,” one user responded.
“Hate to break it to you, my mums been a professional cake baker since 2010 and that aint [sic] it girl,” added another.
Between the endless streams of “No” and a strangely large amount of people personally offended about a previous sweet tea video, TikTokers were also pissed she a) didn’t cut along the lines and b) touched the pieces. The comments are pure chaos, so please enjoy.
Some people agreed this is how they cut cake, others said they remove a small circle from the centre and then cut triangles as per. Others go at it with a fork (!!).
Moral of the story? There’s multiple different ways to cut cake and the ‘best’ way will depend on the cake, the occasion and amount of people.
But if you need to feed an army from a single cake, take inspiration from Aussie dessert queen Katherine Sabbath, whose video of her friend cutting one of her cakes went viral in 2017 for its technique.
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In the meantime, you might as well make a few cakes yourself, you know, to test out which method you like best.
(Lead Image: TikTok/southern_living)
