If you are into creating fancy and artistic cakes, you definitely know the importance of a cake leveler.
There’s no kitchen tool that can be more useful to a baker who loves making cakes than a good, sturdy and efficient cake leveller.
When you are making a multi-tiered cake or a cake with lots of designs on top, you want your layers - especially the bottom ones - to be as level as possible.
Otherwise, your cake will end up being crooked or uneven, and might even come crashing down before anyone has a chance of cutting it. For this, you need one of the best cake leveler that you can find in the market, one that’s sturdy and durable, and will be easy to use.
Image | Name | Our Rating | Price |
|---|---|---|---|
| |||
| |||
|
Best Cake Leveler Reviews
A cake leveler is a kind of adjustable blade that lets you slice of the top portion of a cake so that the layer is even and equal from all sides. It resembles a carpenter’s tool more than it resembles a knife, but it gets the job done.
You can keep your cake on a flat surface, i.e. a baking tray or a plate, and the cake leveler will make a clean cut on the surface, horizontally, to make sure that the top part of the cake becomes as even as possible.
All the different kinds of cake levelers that you find in the market are similar in design and function, but they may still differ in some ways. Here is a list of the six best cake levelers to choose from, and their unique features and uses.
1. 117-piece Cake Decorating Supplies
This is not just a cake leveler, but a 117-piece set of everything that you ever need for decorating cakes and other bakery items.
It includes a cake leveler, of course, but also 48 separate icing tips with numbers on top, a turntable, 3 Russian piping bags, a spatula, a pattern chart for all the icing tips, 3 cake scrapers, 2 couplers, 1 pastry bag, 1 heart-shaped cake mold, 50 disposable icing bags, 1 brush, 1 flower lifter and 1 flower nail. In short, everything you’ll need for baking at least 50 cakes in the future.
Everything in this set, including the cake leveler, is dishwasher safe and completely washable. You can keep using it for a long time, years even, without anything happening to the cake leveler. It is sturdy enough to see you through the baking of innumerable cakes in the near future.
Features:
- Comes with 117-piece baking tools
- Contains piping sheets and tips, patterns and molds
- Dishwasher safe and washable
- Can be used for years
2. Wilton Cake Leveler, Small, 10-Inch
This is a very small and handy cake leveler, something you can use very easily with your cakes. It comes with a complete guide on setting the blade, which is helpful if you are using it for the first time.
The blade is made of metal but the handle is plastic, safe and convenient. You can wash the whole thing in a dishwasher or under running water. The whole thing is only 12 inches x 6.25 inches in size, with a fully adjustable blade so that you can change the height.
It is important that you give the blade a good wipe with a damp piece of cloth before and after each cut, so that the cake batter doesn’t stick to the blade. The blade itself is extremely sharp and can trim your cake from any height, without putting any pressure on your hands.
Features:
- 12 x 6.25 inch blade and handle
- Plastic handle and metal blade
- Fully adjustable blade
- Can be easily cleaned with a damp cloth or running water
- Doesn’t require pressure
- Cuts any kind of cake easily
This is a cake decorating set that comes with a turntable, a cake leveler, a scraper and a spatula. These are just some basic tools that everyone needs, whether you are making a fondant cake or a cream cake. Without a turntable, a cake leveler and a spatula, you’ll just end up with a pound cake or a fruit cake, and nothing else.
These basic tools - especially the turntable and the cake leveler - are extremely important if you want to decorate your cake. The cake leveler will help you keep your cake top even, particularly if you want to make a tiered cake. The turntable too, is quite helpful when you want to easily decorate all the sides of the cake evenly.
The cake leveler is 10” in size, with an adjustable blade for the height.
Features:
- Basic cake decorating tool for beginners
- Comes with a turntable, a scraper and a spatula
- Plastic and easily washable
- Dishwasher safe
- 10” cake leveler
- Adjustable blade
4. 64-piece Cake Decorating Supplies
If you are serious about baking, you are going to need one of these starter sets for decorating your cakes. This is a 64-piece complete set where you get everything - from a 11” turntable to 24 numbered icing tips, a cake leveler, 30 pieces of icing bags, two 11” spatulas, an eBook guide to baking, 2 couplers and 1 brush for cleaning.
Everything in this set is plastic and easily washable. They are essential for baking whether you want to make a fondant cake or a cream cake; you are going to need these baking tools for any kind of design you want to make on your cakes.
Bake your cake or get a store-bought one if you want, but your decorations can be completely your own with these tools.
Features:
- 64-piece of basic baking tools
- Comes with multiple icing bags and icing tips
- Comes with a 11” turntable and two 11” spatulas
- Made of plastic
- Easy to wash; dishwasher safe
- Easy to store
5. PME CL 18 Adjustable Slicer
This is a professional-grade cake leveler and slicer that you are never going to regret having! It comes alone and not as a part of a set; this is a cake leveler you would want to invest in even if you already have one that has come with a set.
This adjustable cake leveler is 18” in length and 7.4” in height. The wire in the middle is about 16.5” perfectly able to cut through a 15”/16” cake. The entire thing is made from stainless steel - both the handle and the blade, which makes this cake leveler extremely sturdy and long lasting.
This is a quality product that you can use not just for making your cakes level and even on the top, but also to cut it into slices and smaller pieces.
Feature:
- Both blade and handle made from stainless steel
- Can be used to level cake, cut into layers and slices
- 16.5” blade
- Fully adjustable blade
- 18” x 7.4” dimension
- Can be used to remove crowns and burnt part of cake
- Solo product; not part of a set
6. Bonviee Adjustable Cake Leveler
This is a cake leveler and slicer that professional bakers and chefs use. It’s sturdy, long-lasting and incredibly sharp.
Most importantly, it doesn’t just come with one adjustable blade for slicing through cake, but three blades. This is the perfect cake leveler that you need to make layers in your cake, for putting in your frosting.
With this cake leveler, you can cut three layers in your cake, in the time that it would have taken you to cut one slice. This is helpful if you are a professional and run a bakery or a home-based business. You can get your job done in less time that you’d actually need. The blades are 1mm each, made of stainless steel and aluminum alloy.
Each of the blades are adjustable, but within their own area. You can adjust all three blades within an area of 1 to 9 cm, or take one (or two) blade out if you want your layers to be thicker.
The handle is made from anti-slip plastic and there are also two rubber feet at the bottom, which guarantees that the cake leveler wouldn’t suddenly slip when you’re using it.
Features:
- Made from stainless steel and aluminum alloy
- Three blades instead of one
- Fully adjustable blades from 1 to 9 cm
- Blades can be taken out if needed
- Perfect for professionals and beginners
- Time-saving
- 18” blades
- Anti-slip plastic handle
- Rubber feet
BUYING A CAKE LEVELER: IMPORTANT FEATURES
When buying a cake leveler, there isn’t much you need. All the brands and models available in the market are similar to each other, and any of them would do the job. However, if you want to take some time to research before getting one, here are some features to look for.
1. Size
The size of your cake leveler is extremely important. If you get a leveler that is large and wide, you can use it to level and tort cakes of different sizes and shapes.
You can get cake levelers up to 18” wide in the market,which can be used for large cakes - round, rectangular, square or heart shaped. Buying something smaller means that you’ll only be able to slice and tort smaller cakes with it, or need multiple cuts for a large cake.
2. Number of Blades
Most cake levelers come with a single blade that you can adjust. These levelers are great for both leveling your cake and torting it.
However, a single blade means that you have to use it several times on the same cake for torting. Whereas, if your cake leveler has more than one blade, you can use it to cut several layers in your cake at the same time.
Of course, these multiple blades are adjustable and can also be taken out, which is something you’ll need to do when leveling your cake.
3. Budget/Price
Cake levelers are very simple kitchen and baking tools, something you’ll mainly need for cakes. Therefore, unless you are looking for something extraordinary that can last decades with relentless using, there’s no need to spend too much money on them. All you need to look for is a decent sized, sturdy cake leveler at a reasonable price.
4. Material
Cake levelers are usually made of stainless steel and plastic. The blades are usually stainless steel while the body and the handle are plastic; sometimes, the body can be made from stainless steel or metal as well.
Stainless steel makes your cake leveler sturdier than plastic which may break in the future. However, it is important that a part of the handle is cloaked with anti-slip rubber or plastic so that your hands don’t slip while using the cake leveler.
5. Part of a Set
If you have started baking or learning to decorate your cakes, you’ll need more baking tools beside a cake leveler. In most cases, a good cake leveler comes with a complete set of other baking tools, which may also include turntables, icing tips and bags, spatulas and scrapers, and anything else that you need for baking.
A cake leveler becomes more affordable when it comes in a set; later you can invest in a better model when you’ve learned all the basics.
6. Ease of Cleaning
Cleaning these cake levelers are easy. You need to give them a rough wipe with a piece of wet cloth after you’ve finished cutting the cake, then wash it with soap under running water. Most of these cake levelers are also dishwasher safe.
How to use a cake Leveler?
For birthdays, Anniversaries, Graduations or any other celebration, everyone prefers a cake that says something about them. Cakes are a piece of art nowadays, fondant layers making it possible to give your cakes any shape, size, texture or design,
There has been significant improvement when it comes to flavor and taste, as well. Gone are the days when the only flavors available were chocolate, vanilla and strawberry; now, we can get amazingly designed cakes in mango, buttercream, pumpkin, banana-chocolate or key lime flavor, or something more exotic.
However, nothing is going to matter until your cake layers are completely straight and even. Your exotic cake may turn out to be topsy-turvy or fall apart at the base because you haven’t used a cake leveler.
This is a baking tool you are definitely going to need if you want to bake a delicious cake, and also if you want your cake to be even so that you can make decorations on top.
Using a cake leveler is easy. It’s almost like using a kitchen knife, but easier because a cake leveler has actually been designed to slice through cakes. Here is a guided step-by-step description of how you can use a cake leveler to cut your cakes into layers.
There are two things you can do with a cake leveler:
- Remove the top of the cake to make it even, and
- Cut your cake into multiple layers.
Here’s how you do both.
Removing the Crown of a Cake
Most of the time when you bake a cake, it forms a dome on top. While it is completely normal for your cakes to have domes, you need the cake to be level if you want to put some kind of decoration on top. The top dome-like part of the cake is called a crown, and professional bakers usually slice off the crown before decorating.
To remove the crown of your cake, you have to first place the cake on a flat surface - a tray, a turntable, or a large plate.
Whatever you are using as a surface has to be flat, not just the area under the cake, but also the area surrounding it. In other words, the area that is going to be under your cake leveler also needs to be as flat as the area under your cake. Otherwise, you might end up with a tilting cake cut haphazardly.
Put your cake on a flat surface, and then adjust the blade of the cake leveler so that the blade is perpendicular to the part of the cake you want to slice of. If you just want to remove the crown without reducing the overall height of the cake, you need to start right at the edge of the top.
Position the cake leveler beside your cake and move it across the cake, so that the blade or the wire cuts through the upper portion. Continue until you’ve reached the other side and the whole crown has come loose. You can remove the crown with your hands since you probably won't need it later.
You can use a cake leveler on cakes of any shape, given that they are slightly smaller than the blade itself. If your cake happens to be larger than your cake, you can still use your cake leveler, but you’ll also need a turntable to work your way through the cake, by rotating the turntable after each small cut.
This will take care of the crown on top of your cake, and you can use any kind of decoration you want.
Slicing Cakes into Layers
When you are making a large cake, it is important that you cut it into different layer to put filling between them. Otherwise, your cake will taste dry and bland. It is the different layers of filling inside a cake that keeps it moist and makes it tastier. Moreover, it is the filling between cake layers that also keeps your cakes stable, especially when you want to make it a high one.
This process of slicing your cake into several layers is called torting. This is one of the most basic and important parts of baking a good cake. The more fillings you put inside a cake, the better it is going to taste, and moist it is going to become.
The process of torting a cake is similar to removing the crown off one. You need to place your cake on a flat surface, and then use your cake leveler to cut it into layers. For this, you need a cake leveler with an adjustable blade. All the cake levelers available in the market have adjustable blades, so any one of them would do.
While you need to make only one cut to remove the crown, you’ll need to make multiple cuts for torting. The average cake has up to three to four layers, which means you have to make several cuts into the same cake. It is always better if you start from the top.
Place your cake on a flat surface and make your measurements. The blades are usually ±1mm in breadth, which is virtually insignificant to the final result. It you have a cake that’s 10cm in height, you’ll need to make each layer around 3⅓ cm. For this you need to make two cuts that make a total of three slices of the cake.
When you’ve made the first cut at the top of the cake, you can remove the top layer with your hands. However, this increases the chance of your layers breaking up or cracking in the middle, especially if you are dealing with a large slice.
The best way to remove a layer is to insert a flat baking tray between the layers where you’ve made the first cut. Removing the baking tray with the cake slice on top would be easier than trying to remove it with your hands.
If your cake leveler has only one blade, as with most of the models available in the market. However, the Bonviee Adjustable Cake Leveler comes with three adjustable blades that will make your task easier and faster. With a multiple-bladed cake leveler, you can make all the levels at the same time, and they will all be even and equal.
As mentioned before, using a cake leveler is just like using a knife to slice through your cakes, but with a cake leveler, you can be sure of ending up with even tops and layers.
Final Words
A cake leveler may be a very simple and small baking tool, but when it comes to baking a cake, you definitely need one. You can’t really make any decorations on your cake if the top isn’t level, and your cake will be dry and bland if you don’t put enough filling between the layers. For all of these reasons, you need a good and reliable cake leveler.
Frankly, you can accomplish the same job with a kitchen knife, but the end result wouldn’t be as good. For cakes, you need the help of a cake leveler, just as you would need a baking oven, baking trays and mixers.