Monday, December 27, 2010

Cutting Cake with Dental Floss

Among the various loots I transported home after visiting my family for Christmas was a cake of most delicious construction. On arriving home I decided to cut the cake and store the individual pieces in the freezer. At this point I realized I had no implement which would neatly cut the cake. This was not a surprise for my expansive collection of power tools is inversely mirrored by my nonexistent supply of cooking utensils.
After some thought I decided to use dental floss. If wire cutting works for cheese, which is nominally more dense than cake, floss should work for cake.
This worked very well. The floss cut the cake easily and as its length is easily varied it is possible to cut the entire length of the cake at one time.
My original intent was to press the floss through the cake and then thread it out of one side at the bottom, thus cutting in one pass. This produced a cut edge so fine the icing seemed to reconnect after the floss had passed and so I drew the floss back up through the cake thereby cutting with the floss twice. The image shows the result of this double cut.