Kitchen Hacks

The Best Way to Cut a Cake for Three People

by: Valerio Farris

September 28, 2017

There’s tea for two. And, also, two for tea. But what about cake for three? A new video making rounds on the internet shows that three people can have their cake and definitely eat it too.

The video comes to us from Numberphile, a digit-driven web channel concerned with all things mathematical. They tackle the tough stuff: explainers of four dimensional shape making, quaternions, the largest prime number ever recorded on paper. This week, they dissected how to break down a cake amongst three.

In the video's hypothetical, we follow Alice, Bob, and Charlie, three generous and egalitarian friends who seek to divide a recently acquired cake equally. The division process explained in the video feels arbitrary and unnecessarily complicated, but isn’t that just all math? Nonetheless, the narrator effectively explains how to divide what seems like a dry and crumbly cake into three even portions:

So, time to put this knowledge to good use: bake a cake and call up two friends! We have just the recipes to get you started:

One Bowl, No Measurements: Chocolate Cake, As Easy As Can Be

Clotilde Dusoulier's Yogurt Cake (Gâteau au Yaourt)

A Chocolate-Almond Cake That's Rich & Jammy—Even Without Butter

Nigella Lawson's Dark and Sumptuous Vegan Chocolate Cake

Neva Tee's Carrot Cake

Wait, We Should Put What in Our Chocolate Cake?

Would you try your hand at the tri-cutting technique? Let us know in the comments.

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Valerio is a freelance food writer, editor, researcher and cook. He grew up in his parent's Italian restaurants covered in pizza flour and drinking a Shirley Temple a day. Since, he's worked as a cheesemonger in New York City and a paella instructor in Barcelona. He now lives in Berlin, Germany where he's most likely to be found eating shawarma.

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1 Comment

BerryBaby September 28, 2017

That was ridiculous IMO. First, my cakes are always bigger than that, and two, I would not serve a whole cake to three people. Most people want a small piece. I ask before I cut. I watched the video thinking I'd see a great technique. It became a mess the more she tried to divy it up.