If your knife isn’t as long as the diameter of your cake, you’ll need to slide the knife along the top of the cake in order to make a complete line in the frosting.

You’ll need to make sure your glass is tall enough to hold the knife you’re using.

Press into the frosting to score the line, only until you read the first layer of cake. Do not cut into the cake itself.

The first 2 lines have now divided the cake into 3 pieces.

The first 3 lines have now divided the cake into 4 pieces. The 2 smallest pieces will be the size of all the final pieces.

This entire process is based on estimating the size of the slices, but you’re aiming to make all the pieces equal in size.

The final result of this process will divide the round cake into 10 even pieces. If you have more than 10 people to serve, you can cut each of the 10 pieces in half to produce 20 even pieces.

Pull the knife out of the bottom of the cake slowly. Scoop up each piece of cake with an offset spatula after it’s cut, or wait to start handing out cake pieces once the entire cake is cut.

Make sure the glass or container you use is tall enough for the knife you’ve chosen to use.

If you don’t need as many pieces of cake, you can make the strips larger/wider.

You don’t need to warm the knife in water to cut these small strips. You can also cut the flat slice into strips longer than 1 in (2. 5 cm) if you’d like.

The warmed metal will cut through the cake quicker and easier than a cold knife.

This method will only work for cakes that are 8 inches (20 cm) in diameter or larger. Smaller cakes should be cut into the typical triangle pieces. The end result will be an outer ring-shaped cake and an inner round cake.

For cakes larger than 8 inches (20 cm), you can either keep the same slice width of 1. 5 inches (3. 8 cm), which will result in more than 21 pieces, or you can increase the width of each slice in order to still create about 21 pieces.

For example, if the entire cake was 8 inches (20 cm) in diameter, you’ll have a 4 in (10 cm) mini-round cake left in the middle. Don’t forget to rewarm and dry your knife before you start cutting the inner cake. However, you won’t need to rewarm between cuts.

This method was created by a British mathematician named Sir Francis Galton and first published in the journal Nature in 1906.

The final piece of cake will be 1 in (2. 5 cm) wide. If you want a larger slice of cake, cut the cake more than 0. 5 in (1. 3 cm) from the middle.

Again, you can cut a slice larger than 1 in (2. 5 cm) wide, if you’d like.

Serve and/or eat the thin slice of cake you cut out. You can cut this middle slice into small pieces if you’d like.

The original method suggests securing the cake with a rubber band. However, this will only work if your cake has a harder exterior made of something like fondant (and isn’t very big). Alternatively, you could use a ribbon, a thin piece of parchment paper, or a piece of plastic wrap to hold the two ends together. You could also avoid securing the cake, as simply sliding the two ends together have probably protected the inside of the cake well enough.

When storing the cake in the fridge, it’s up to you if you’d like to cover the cake with a lid or plastic wrap. The key to this method is that the inside part of the cake, or the sponge, will stay fresh because none of it is exposed to the air.

Eventually, the pieces of cake left will be small enough to eat on their own and you won’t need to continue cutting pieces from the middle.