Cutting 2-Layer Cakes

Video Transcript

"Now I'm going to show you how to shape and form the base of our cake. Now when I teach my cake decorating classes, the people have to bring their cakes in from home and then we decorate them. And many times they come with rather misshapen cakes. Cakes made in a disposable pan that may not be quite the shape that you want. And, or you know, things, very high don't or just not the proper shape. So I'm going to take this opportunity to show you how to get professional results out of a cake that may not come out from the oven looking so professional. OK, so, I've already cut this one in half. We're going to use three half layers for our cake, and as you see, this one is rather domed, and it's a little flared out here. And we want to, and we're also going to cut it in half because we want to use three half layers for our cake. So, first I'm going to cut off this dome. You want to use a serrated knife, and just very carefully skim off the top of the cake. And you want to get down and look at the, see how level it is while you're working on it. OK, now when you have a really, a spot like this that's very deep, you can fill that with frosting. So you don't need to worry too much about that. You can do things to build up. You also don't want to throw away any of this top dome part because you can use it while you're frosting the cake to lift up any sections that are too low. You can add a little cake like that. OK, now to split this cake in half evenly, you take a ruler and put in toothpicks like this. Just very gently. I'm putting this in at about half an inch. And halfway, the middle of the cake. And you go all around with the toothpicks. When you have your toothpicks in, now you can use that as a guide to cut your cake in half. Keeping your serrated knife horizontal and just work around. We're not cutting right through to the center, we're going to cut around here. Letting the serrated knife go just above each toothpick. So you're keeping, keeping that really horizontal so you get it nice, even layers. And once you get all the way around the cake, then you can go through the middle, and you have two nice, even layers. Now we're going to get our ganache and we'll put our layers together."