You Probably Cut Your Birthday Cake All Wrong -- Here’s Why You Should Change Your Method

Chances are you probably cut your cakes in wedges like a pie, but this is apparently not the right way to slice your frosted confection if you won't be eating the whole thing in one day and want it to last.

Alex Bellos with the YouTube channel Numberphile used "scientific principles" to explain how to properly cut your cake.

Bellos called the "classic" way of slicing a "really bad way of cutting a cake," because the portions of the cake left that you store will get dry.

Slicing a cake in wedges, according to some, is not the best way to cut the sugary treat. (Image source: YouTube)

There is, however, a way to avoid this issue.

"There is a better way, a way that is more than 100 years old," Bellos said.

It's actually based on a method published in 1906 in a letter to the editor of the journal Nature titled "Cutting a Round Cake on Scientific Principles."

Here's how it works:

1. Slice the cake completely across, just slightly off the center.
2. Make a second, parallel cut across the cake about an inch or so away from the first cut.
3. Now you have a large rectangular slice that you can either eat the whole of yourself or cut in half to share.

Here Bellos is demonstrating how the cake is cut the second day that you're ready to eat it. (Image source: YouTube)

Bellos called this center slice the "prime steak" or "T-bone cut" of the cake.

With the two halves of the cake leftover, simply push them together so the centers touch and secure with a rubber band, if necessary. Alternatively, if you have leftover frosting, that would probably do the trick helping the two halves adhere as well.

"The following day, all the flesh, the sponge is going to be nice and soft," Bellos said.

Just watch the video to see how it's done:

(H/T: Sploid)

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Front page image via Shutterstock.