5 Cake Making Gadgets Tested by Design Expert | Well Equipped | Epicurious

ready on your mark get set stand back i'm dan and i've been designing kitchen gadgets for 40 years i'm going to test some cake gadgets and see if i can find a way to make them better i would exaggerate this shape from a cross section at the very end eliminate this entire part these are the products i'm going to test perfect cake divider curved cake slicer bon vie cake leveler xylis easy slice two-handed cake slicer [Music] perfect cake divider its purpose in life is to show you how to cut your cake into perfectly even slices let's see how effective it is step one i will center this as perfectly as possible so the number of slices that this is preset to is 14 10 8 and 6. so i'm going to set this to 10 because that would be a little more difficult you know 8 slices is easy so first slice is made with the green guide i'm not slicing all the way through by doing this i'm missing the middle right so i'm going to have to go back and do this but what i'm doing here is i'm just setting the guide now the next step is to turn the green part so it's over your last slice then make your next cut i'm getting a little messy here with both the knife and the guide the way this works if it's off by a little bit it's going to be successively off more and more as you come around 360 degrees if i use the guide as it indicates i end up with an undersized slice because it is collecting all those inaccuracies and punishing the very last slice the next thing i would have to do regardless of that is this now comes up oh and it's pulling out the middle of the cake so that's not too pretty so now i've got to come in and finish up those cuts boy for something that's supposed to give you evenly divided slices i'd say this falls short for person number 10. let's say you don't have a perfect cake divider at home let's look at some alternative method i am going to use a protractor [Music] it's all about the math in terms of effectiveness i would give the perfect cake divider a zero it's going to be successfully inaccurate time for the left-handed oil test by making my non-dominant hand slippery is a good way to highlight any deficiencies in the design and it's going to be a little more challenging this time because we have a cheesecake topped with strawberries in terms of usability there's no difficulty in spinning this it's just totally inaccurate there's just too much play in the mechanism added to the fact that if you have a topping on your cake it's either going to destroy the topping or you're only going to be so effective at getting your slices done there's no physical difficulty but the fact that you have to try so hard to be accurate and the fact that they call it perfect boy it makes me want to give it a one out of five let's see how i would redesign this i'm just going to draw these little fins which now look like this i would make both of those a little more forgiving for a knife that's coming in so i would flare those out a bit so that an incoming knife would guide itself more readily into those grooves i would also rethink this part because this part is tiny as well so this is what fits into the cake it's not enough to keep it steady in the cake as you're spinning this around i can feel the play in this and again any sort of play is going to multiply itself i would do whatever is possible to make these numbers more readable so not only should the click itself be more definite but the numbers should be more visible in terms of a buy rating i would give this a zero it's a good idea but boy it does not live up at all to its perfect promise you've got a ways to go curved cake slices its purpose in life is to cut a curvy slice of cake let's see how effective it is center it give it a push wow it's not that easy to cut through let me give it a jiggle and we're almost through it's a little painful because i'm pushing down on this blade i don't think i'm all the way through and lift and we have a slice that has a curve the slice looks fine it may look a little bit better than a straight cut but in either case i'd be into eating this let's try the second slice here's where the mystery comes in what do i do next i've got a flat cut in the cake here but i've got a curved blade boy this is a little mysterious again i'm in a bit of pain hopefully the cake is worth the pain here's slice number two i'm just going to put it on the same plate the question really is who gets this slice at the party it's got to be someone you don't like or someone who doesn't like cake or both so not sure what they could have been thinking here the geometry just isn't working let's see how it compares to a plain old straight knife and server [Music] on a scale of one to five i would give the curve cake slicer a zero i just don't know how you would cut that second piece of cake now i'm going to try the left-handed oil test and this is not going to be a one-handed operation boy you really need two hands on this let me try it this way because i really need to push down this is not feeling good it's got some resistance that maybe was not anticipated when someone designed this thing i would love to get the design team in here and watch them cut up the cake again it's not a bad looking result i just don't know what to do next the slicer put me in such a bad mood that i'm not sure i'm even in the mood for cake well in terms of usability on a one to five scale again can't go low enough i would give this a zero i don't know what anyone's thinking when they're requiring you to push down on this metal edge in order to slice through a piece of cake let's think about a redesign so here's the issue we have this is slice number one slice number two has nowhere to go i can do this and end up with this piece of cake this geometry makes absolutely no sense i've tried looking at this every which way flipping it turning around going left going right as for a redesign here's what i'm thinking a yin yang thing that would nest into itself so your next slice would also be curved but curved on both sides so essentially what i'm thinking is an m.c escher type cake slicer that would just nest itself as puzzle pieces as you work your way around the cake the other issue is the pressure on the hand you're cutting two slices at once which means twice as much pressure with this design you're expected to actually push into the edges of of the steel a suggestion would be of course to turn this into a handle we want something here some sort of platform for the hands really the best place to apply pressure is going to be right over the part that you're slicing my buy rating for the curved case slicer is a zero it just does not make sense if there's anything i've learned as a designer you have to respect geometry bone v cake level its purpose in life is to cut evenly flat layers of cake what i have here is an unfrosted cake that i'm ready to cut into layers the first step is to adjust the heights of the blades first thing to do is to loosen up the wing nuts there's a spring on the other side which will loosen up need to line the blade up so the blade itself is horizontal not really clear how tight to go here and this isn't feeling good ready on your mark get set stand back not that easy because i'm cutting three layers at a time which would triple the amount of force that i need to exert also there's no good way to push that way as i'm slicing i've got this handle here but what i'm finding myself doing is try to twist the handle into the knife i'm not even halfway through and i want to take a nap this blade is starting to ride out of the top so boy it's not as level as i would have thought structural failure on the top of the case it's really nice and thick here and boy it's much much much thinner on this side oh wow that even fooled me i was looking for four layers but man the top layer just self-destructed boy i'm not loving this at all it's destroyed the cake the curved cake slicer made me too angry to eat cake now i think i'm too tired to eat cake let's try it with just a serrated knife and a ruler [Music] in terms of effectiveness on a one to five scale this gets a zero because boy it's very difficult to use it didn't do wonders for the cake it actually mangled it okay it's time for the left-handed oil test i am not looking forward to this first thing that needs to be done is the blades need to face the other way i can't actually spin this around because these connector pieces are not round but actually rectangular what i'm going to have to do is disassemble this and put it back together not loving it so let's try something else i'm just going to keep it in its current configuration and try using it as it is with my left hand this is set up to be a right-handed tool that's working against all left-handers right from the start ow ow may be hard to see but it's easy to feel the pain in my hands and you can see again if i let go how high this came up boy it's just uncontrollable man i think i'm going to call it quits this just is not worthwhile in terms of usability i would give this a zero this gadget requires more effort than just about any other gadget i've ever seen it just doesn't deserve to exist there is no shortage of things that can be improved the blades themselves really need to be something more along the line of a bread knife blade these these blades are just way too flexible the other thing as mentioned is that your force so that the blades don't lift up even with a bread knife blade it may want to take on a life of its own if you end up tilting so i would design a handle here and i would make that a substantial handle that has either some height what we're really talking about recommendation is just a complete total redesign there's really not much in here that's that's salvageable in terms of a buy rating i would give this a zero another zero it's not because i'm in a bad mood today how can i be in a bad mood i'm surrounded by cake silas easy slice in theory it's designed to allow you to cut cut pick up the slice and then push it onto the plate let's see how effective it is it's a little tough because what i effectively have is a thick blade now that there are two layers of material one of them being plastic let me come in from underneath i am just about the size and let's push it forward it's not like i'm pushing the cake off of the server boy my next step would be just that let it drop or spin it you know tilt it so that the cake falls off not immediately impressed let's try a second slice bit hard to push through because it's a double layer of material the metal and the plastic scoop it up scoop it up make some room on the plate i am going to push it forward what i'm left with is this it didn't magically come off of the server so what i still need to do is tilt it let's see how it compares to a traditional knife and cake server [Music] in terms of effectiveness on a one-to-five scale i would give this a zero sorry i know i'm giving a lot of zeros today but trust me they deserve it it's time for the left-handed oil test i will slice down and boy this is taking a bit more pressure notice i'm going to choke up because that gives me better leverage boy i can also feel some pressure points based on the shape the edges i'm talking about are right here they're just a little bit sharper than you would want lift it bring it over to the plate now push it forward now this isn't working well i don't know if you could see this but as i push forward my middle finger ring finger they're actually pushing back because the shape is not conducive to resisting that force bye bye cake bye see you cake is getting further away this seems like it's going to just want to fall flat oh we're getting a little caught up here too i'm not sure if that's a function of the fact that i was sliding against the cake as i was pushing in terms of usability on a one to five scale i would give this a .5 maybe a zero because i don't see any advantage to this over a traditional slicer okay let's think about a redesign because we're pushing forward that means this part of the handle wants to push back i would exaggerate this shape quite a bit not necessarily this exact shape but you get the ideas that at least my index finger or maybe all fingers to contribute to the resisting force i would try a couple of different shapes there because i was actually designing this the other thing i would do and this is a bit radical is i don't see any reason for this part of the blade at all all we want to do is push off the cake so if we want to push off the cake there's no sense sliding the cake forward i think we just want to limit this to here to be clear what i would do is eliminate this entire part of this dark gray plastic piece sorry i'm drawing right on the gadget itself as opposed to sketching but boy i don't see any reason to use this at any point in the future so i think we're okay in terms of a buy rating sorry another zero i don't see any reason to own this because it just makes life a little more difficult not easier but boy another zero two-handed cake slicer its purpose in life is to slice a piece of cake and pick it up in the same motion let's see how effective it is and that was okay i will say there's a little bit of a curve to the slice because the way i'm pulling it in you can squeeze or expand this to adjust to any size slice the more you squeeze it it takes on more of a curve so let's see that may be problematic this time i'm going to cut a smaller slice let's make a real small one is quite curvy this slice looks good but if i do another small slice or a big slice i'm cutting against the curve it turns out having a pretty interesting shape of cake if you don't like curved cake it's a problem let's see how this compares to a more typical knife and server [Music] in terms of effectiveness i would give this no more than a three and i think that's being generous it's a little bit demanding to require two hands to slice a piece of cake okay let's try this again using the left-handed oil test oil on both hands make both hands slippery two hands down pressing quite a bit i need to exert some thumb pressure it's not feeling great on my thumbs it doesn't really want to lift it's a little bit out of control with the slippery hand it is a little bit wobbly that's a function of the shape of this handle in terms of usability i would give this a two i don't think it deserves as much as a three it could have been much better design a much better thought out how'd you probably taste the cake just to make sure that the device didn't have any effect oh yeah no problem there five out of five for the cake hold on let me wash it down let's talk about redesign one thought would be to make the blaze themselves of a heavier gauge metal that could affect the ease of bending you really would have to squeeze more but it could keep the blades a little more straight one place i would make a change is in this handle itself your thumb pushes down but your fingers are pushing up because of that from a cross section at the very end the edge of the handle would have a triangular shape and maybe the opposite at the front maybe we want a triangular shape here because this is where your thumb is going to be pressing down as a buy rating on a one to five scale i would rate this a one i don't think i would run out and urge anyone to say buy this this is great i don't see it has any major advantage over a more traditional cake slicer i think what's interesting about gadgets that fail to this extent is they're good examples of what not to do and i mean that seriously it's a cliche to say that you can learn from your mistakes but in this case i think you can learn from other people's mistakes cake gadgets i am very disappointed [Music]

Channel: Epicurious

Views: 1,624,421

Keywords: baking gadget, baking gadget test, baking gadgets, cake cutter, cake cutters, cake gadget test, cake leveler, cake slicer, cake tools, dan formosa, design expert, epicurious, epicurious cake, epicurious gadget test, epicurious gadgets, epicurious well equipped, expert cake, gadget design, gadget expert, gadget review, gadget reviews, gadget test, gadgets, industrial design, kitchen gadget, kitchen gadget test, kitchen gadgets, slicing tools, well equipped

Id: 8BUjYVZ8u5g

Length: 17min 38sec (1058 seconds)

Published: Fri Feb 26 2021