The Vintage Kitchen Tool Bakers Used To Swear By For Seamless Cake Cutting

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Have you ever made a beautiful homemade cake, only to dread the moment when it's time to slice it? Even if you've waited for your masterpiece to cool down — and you're using proper knife techniques to slice a cake — it can be nerve-racking to cut through the delicate dessert. Instead of risking a collapse or crumbled pieces, consider using a retro solution: a cake breaker. The name is somewhat ironic since the last thing you want to do is "break the cake," but this tool ensures that delicate cakes stay solid. It was used to cut nostalgic cakes of the past, particularly delicate ones such as angel food and chiffon. Although sturdier than the other two, sponge cake still has a light, airy texture that the cake breaker would effectively slice through. 

A vintage cake breaker looks a lot like a metal comb, but with thinner tines. The handle of the old-school tool was often decorated silver or colorful Bakelite, a synthetic resin popular in the 20th century. It was invented in 1932 by Cale J. Schneider, with the original name of "food breaker." The photo included in the product's patent shows the cake breaker slicing through a cake, so it's clear that this was the intended use, but it's not obvious what other foods this tool may have also originally been used for.

What makes a cake breaker better than a knife? The super-thin tines pierce straight down through the cake — they do not compress the fluffy texture like a knife often does. Once the cake breaker has been gently pressed into the cake, the tool can be softly wiggled back and forth to cut the slice. The compression of the cake from a knife is what causes pieces and crumbs to fall off a slice, and the cake breaker gives a clean cut.

As the original "food breaker" patent photo shows, the cake breaker can also be used with a frosted cake. Aside from the classic triangle-shaped slice, the tool can also cut other shapes, including squares and rectangles when serving groups. While there isn't much written record of what else it was used for, this tool can certainly be multipurpose. It would work well for soft, sweet loaves, such as banana bread, zucchini walnut bread, or coffee cake. Any airy desserts that feature meringue would also benefit from being divided up by the cake breaker, but it may be difficult to make a clean cut through a pie crust. Modern-day cake breakers can be purchased on Amazon, such as the Gataiphans angel food cake cutter, which has an identical design to ones from the past. You can also check out antique shops and online marketplaces, such as Etsy or eBay, to score a cool retro one!