Trimming and Leveling Cake Layers

Hi, I'm Rachel Teufel. And in this lesson, I wanna share a few tips and tricks with you on how to trim your cakes and level them to be perfectly smooth on the top so that you can create an even cake. So I'd like to show you two different ways to be able to level your cakes. So really just depends on what you have available to you. The easiest way is to use a leveler, but not everybody has a leveler on hand. So I'm first gonna show you how to level a cake using a knife. And I like to just use a board underneath my surface when I have a cake in a turntable going on, but the turntable and a large serrated knife are your two elements that you need in order to trim a cake by hand. And basically what you're doing is trying to get the inside edge and the outside edge to be about the same height. At this point in time, if we were to stack multiple cakes that have this sort of divot in the middle, they would eventually become wonky. Especially if you end up with a dome, which is the opposite, you have this big bulge on the top of your cake, then that needs to be trimmed off as well. You wanna start with as level of a surface as you can. So utilizing a serrated knife, just kind of eyeball the height of this compared to the height of the outside. And then you just wanna start using your cerated knife and going back and forth. And you can go in about an inch and then you wanna start rotating your turntable as you saw. So if this doesn't stay in place, you can just use your hand ever so slightly on the top. Just don't get too close to that blade. And as you can see, I am not really moving my knife in. I am simply sawing back and forth and I'm using my turntable to guide the cutting. And then once you get back to that starting point, then you can slide across and it will actually lift off the remainder of your cake. And so what you're going for is just as level as you can get it. If you feel like you need to come in and just straighten it up a little bit, you can do that. And you can do that either by cutting across with your knife, or again, just continue sawing back and forth with your knife and turning your turntable. And I find that turning the turntable works a little bit better than just sawing straight across because oftentimes what happens is, as we're sawing, we can move our hand in different ways. So you may not end up with a perfectly level straight cake. Whereas if you kind of tuck that elbow in, set that knife right along the edge and just saw with it and turn your turntable, for the most part, you're gonna stay as level as you can. So that's how you saw using a knife. And if you were to invest in a cake leveler, this is what a cake leveler looks like. So there are lots of different types of levelers out there. There are very inexpensive models that are simply a wire in the middle that very easily will cut. It also has a frame around it. And those are as inexpensive as like $10 and found at your local craft stores. You will find everything in between that and this leveler, which is an Agbay. I'm gonna turn it around so you can see. This is what's so lovely about the Agbay is that it has a measurement tool, a ruler, right on the side of it, and these adjustable knobs in order to raise or lower your blade. I just prefer to always have my blade facing out away from me while doing any sort of adjustments whatsoever. And of course, whenever you're using the leveler, you always wanna go away from yourself. So what's nice about this is I can kind of get down and see what height I know that I need for my cake. And then I can just bounce over to the other side and very easily line it up with the same measurement so that when I go to cut my cake, I know that my cake is perfectly level. So you just wanna set your cake in the center and using one hand, you're just gonna saw this back and forth. And as you can see with this particular cake, I need to go a little bit lower with my leveler because I still have a significant little gap in there. So depending upon the style of cake that you're using, how it bakes up, you may or may not need to trim. Sometimes cakes just come out really beautifully and level. I've intentionally left out eggs in this cake so that I got an uneven cake, just so that I could show you guys how that works. So what's nice about the leveler is it really does allow you the ability to get super thin layers as well. So like, this is how thin, super thin. It allows you to get some really thin layers out of your cakes, especially if you're going to tort them, because then you're creating multiple layers within your tort as well. So now that we have both of our cakes leveled, let's talk about trimming for a moment. When somebody references trimming a cake, they're actually talking about the sides of your cake. So oftentimes when we are stacking our cakes, if our cakes have not baked even, sometimes they will bulge out, sometimes they will shrink up, and sometimes we just don't line them up very well when we're looking at our cake board. And so you can trim it at this point. What I like to do is just use a straight edge. This is just called a straight edge, and it's used for a lot of different things. It's also referenced as a bench scraper. But if you're gonna use it for icing, don't use it also as a bench scraper, which is just to kind of get dough up and off your surface. You really wanna try to keep that blade as clean as you can. But if you're in need of trimming the edges, being able to look here right inside that gap, you wanna make sure that there is space between your board and your cake, because this is where all of your icing is going to live on the edges of your cake. So for instance, I am pretty close to having the cake hit this straight edge. So in this case, I would probably want to trim this cake down just a little bit. I usually just double check to make sure I have plenty of room over there still and it's not just the fact that I maybe did not set it up rightly, but we really just wanna make sure that we have enough room for the icing. And I always use my boards for my final coat of icing, so I get a nice straight layer. So this is really important for the style of icing, the technique that I use to ice my cakes. So in order to trim the edges of your cake, you are literally just going to use your cerated knife and you can trim either straight down like that. In which case you would just work your way around the cake going vertically. And again, your whole goal here is just to create space for your icing to sit. So now I have a larger space here that works really well in order for me to grab icing, get it against the cake and not have cake show through my final coat. The other option that you have is to go vertical with your knife and just slice that way. And you can kind of keep working your way around the cake just basically by dragging your knife, you can kind of get around that. And this is another way, you know, just rotating your cake while the knife is sitting right along the edge. I'm literally following the edge of the board just to be able to pull a little bit of that cake off. So for me, it appears that this particular cake really was just a little bit thicker on that bottom layer, not so much on the top layer. And what I would also say is that some people don't like this outer caramelized crust of the cake at all. And so there are some bakers who prefer just to cut that off entirely. My personal preference is that I actually like that caramelization, as long as it's not dried out or burnt. We definitely don't want burnt. But if it's not dried out or burnt, I like that because it gives sort of a tighter seal. You can see the crumb on the lower part where I have trimmed definitely wants to come off. But on parts where I haven't trimmed, it sort of locks those crumbs in a little bit better. So I prefer to leave the crust of the cake in place unless it has bulged and is hanging over, in which case I need to trim it in order to ice my cake. So that is how you both level and trim the sides of your cakes. At this point, these tiers are ready to be disassembled and reassembled with filling and icing. So there are a handful of ways to be able to trim and level your cakes. It's really truly about finding whatever works best for you in your kitchen that makes your job faster and easier.