Cake cutting tools - GIFs and photos

[Jon]

The world of kitchen tools is extremely susceptible to gimmickry, and you can see it clearly in cake cutting devices. Is this a "real" cake cutting machine in this GIF? I don't know.



Legitimate industrial use of cake cutting devices does exist, but I believe mass-produced cakes are generally sold as complete cakes, and not sliced. Also, obviously, cake slices dry out quickly.

But wouldn't you want to "save time" and use such a tool to cut a cake that you serve to guests? For most of these devices, that would require you to cut the entire cake at once, and to serve each person an equally-sized portion. That's certainly possible, but - and this hit me yesterday at a friend's son's birthday party - the cutting and serving of cake is a shared celebratory ritual. Auto-cutting the cake would be like evenly cutting open a pinata and handing out 6 pieces of candy to each kid.

The common manual commercially-available cake/pie cutters generally take this form:



Obviously, these look like giant apple corer/wedger gadgets, which I think are excellent tools. But cutting an apple and cutting a cake, while physically similar tasks, are culturally miles apart.

Here's a pie version. Six giant pieces of pie? I'm not sure this cutter won't require a knife to clean up the edges.



Here we have a similar cutting guide. Possibly a pizza here? Called the "Equaslice", this one looks like it's used in a Communist nation to perfectly divide up a once-yearly pie among loyal citizens.



This concept of over-enthusiastic toolmaking is very similar to the Bottoms Up reverse draft beer filling system, that attempts to save us from the horrors of another important human ritual: pouring a beer.

Is there a reasonable, legitimate use of the giant apple-style wedger gadget? Yes there is:



Interestingly, when a watermelon is cut like this, instead of the middle section cutting out a core to be thrown away, it yields a column of the juicy watermelon center.

Previously:

PancakeBot pancake printer
Cake frosting GIF
Cake serving tool GIF

[mklotz]

The tool designer in me is forced to point out that, unless you get the central axis of the cake aligned with the rotation axis of the rotating table (which presumably corresponds with the plane of the cutting wire) you won't get equal slices.

OTOH, the tool improver in me is forced to point out that, if you make the wire plane movable with respect to the table axis and make the stepping of the table adjustable, you have the makings of a device to form a round cake into a polygonal cake. [I am not dissuaded by the fact that there is virtually no market for polygonal cakes.]

Cake cutting reminds me of a learning episode with my two young (then) daughters. Mom gives the older one a sandwich and tells her to cut it in half and give half to her younger sister. Younger sister objects claiming older sister will take bigger half.

So I tell her that we'll fix it by having older sister cut and younger sister pick which piece she wants. It was absolutely delightful to watch her face as she wrapped her mind around that concept. Even more so when I told her that, with that law, the only fair thing older sister could do would be to cut it into two equal halves. The idea that laws can force people to do the right thing for their own benefit was a major lesson learned.

[Toolmaker51]

...Even more so when I told her that, with that law, the only fair thing older sister could do would be to cut it into two equal halves. The idea that laws can force people to do the right thing for their own benefit was a major lesson learned.

That does it.
Next election, I'm voting M. Klotz!

[mklotz]

That does it.
Next election, I'm voting M. Klotz!

Chuckle.

Election, hell. Surely you meant to write coronation. :-)

I've given it a lot of thought over the years and come to the conclusion that human beings are incapable of honest, equitable, effective self-government. [The influences that turned us into earth's dominant species preclude the selflessness demanded of self-government.] The only thing that has a chance of working is a benign dictatorship. Trouble is, as we all know, absolute power corrupts absolutely. The proofs of that have been many over the years. OTOH, a few have done more good than harm. Julius Caesar, Henry VIII, Peter the Great and Kemal Atatürk among others spring to mind.

[imohtep56]

Thanks a lot- I just gained 5 lbs watching that...

[Frank S]

Never cared for round cakes I prefer rectangular made in 9 by 18" cake or cobbler pans. some call them sheet cakes but to me a sheet cake is made on a low sided large 20 by 28 sheet and will only be about 1/2 to 3/4" thick. Those are best when having a party large groups for a bunch of curtain climbers Fortunately for me I don't have to cater to either of those groups Guests are welcome in my house as long as the numbers are 5 or less at a time that being the largest number of either of my kids family units.
Cutting a cake into equal portions is no huge deal just slice any which way you care some do not actually want to have a large piece of cake and some will want a larger one than others. The nice thing about sheet cakes is they can be cut with a Pizza cutter 30 seconds will slice one up into 3 x 3 squares give or take given on how straight you can cut.
Not going into the governing thing my view points about any form of government beyond self government would not be appropriate to be laid out for the public's eye

[Frank S]

I saw 2 cakes in the gif that I would like to have a slice of the banana nut with the white icing and the one with the butter scotch icing the rest are not fit to eat well maybe the classic yellow cake if they were to loose the jelly between the layers.

[Jon]

Same type of tool, here cutting wheels of cheese in what is assumedly an industrial setting. I love how the blue/white labeled cheese wheel flexes a bit before yielding.

[volodar]

Not much a fan of cakes or other sweets. The cheese gif, however, makes me look forward to breakfast!

[Jon]

More pizza cutting gimmickry:



I can't imagine someone serving out a pizza and cutting it with these scissors. There is only one worse pizza faux-pas: