Serving Cake For A Crowd? This Trick Ensures Everyone Will Get A Slice

Cake usually brings people together. Whether it's a birthday, retirement, or a major life milestone, it's a time for celebration. That is, until it's time to cut the cake. It then becomes a high-stakes social experiment, with everyone eyeing the designated cake cutter. And with a growing line of hungry people staring you down, it can be intimidating, to say the least. One wrong slice of the knife and someone walks away with a heaping plate full while the last person gets a pitiful sliver. Or they end up like Milton in "Office Space." Now, you have a potential "Hunger Games" situation on your hands, and you just wanted to eat your chocolate cake in peace.

The good news is you don't need professional pastry skills to pull it off. The right tool matters, of course, and there are a few other basic techniques to know beforehand. However, there is a specific method for serving a cake to a crowd so you don't end up in a frosting-fueled fiasco.

This hack treats the cake as a grid rather than cutting traditional wedge slices. Cutting the cake straight across, then cutting parallel strips and intersecting your original cuts with smaller slabs will result in uniform slices each time. You will end up with diamond shapes on the inside and small triangular pieces on the outside of the cake. By using this trick, you can cut cake like a pro, and serve slices that give everyone their fair share, and maybe even seconds.

As shown in the video below, cut the cake in half down the middle. The top should look a little like a lotus flower after you've make all of the cuts. Then, turn the cake 90 degrees and make horizontal slices all the way across. Repeat the same method on the other side, and there you have it. If you wanted to stretch your cake — if you have a bigger crowd, or so everyone could have a second piece — you could cut the diamond-shaped pieces in half. Or just save that for yourself later.

Another hack before even slicing into the cake is to run your knife under hot water. That way, it glides through each slice smoothly. The right knife also makes cake cutting easier. Nothing is worse than a crowd full of hungry people or screaming kids while struggling to cut through a thick cake with a dull steak knife. A chef's knife will work for most cakes, but if you have a denser ice cream cake or one with multiple layers a serrated knife is the best choice.