Photo: Ugorenkov Aleksandr (Shutterstock)
Before working in a bakery, I’d fix a cake on a plate and get annoyed when it wouldn’t sit flat. Most dinner plates are slightly concave, and this can crack delicate desserts like tarts and cheesecakes. A cardboard cake round provides a sturdy, flat surface. It’s a better surface for your knives to cut on, and it allows you to move the dessert around freely, rather than clinging to the first thing you set it on.
If you’re packing the item in a box to bring to a party, the cake round provides protection by sticking out about half an inch from the bottom. If you hit a bump, the cake board knocks into the side of the box, not the cute frosting flowers that you put on the side. You can also use cake rounds to trace circles of parchment, or measure a top or bottom for a pie crust. If it’s large enough, you can use a cake round for storage. Sit a cake round on top of a flat pie in the fridge and stack another pie on top to capitalize on vertical space. You can buy decorative rounds like the gold one in the photo, but I usually buy the plain, matte, white ones because they’re inexpensive in bulk.
