Cake people - can I have some help please?!?

[dizzydixies]

ok, am not to bad at the old baking, nothing fancy but can follow a receipe and normally pull it off BUT am fed up with two things

1. the sodding dust cloud when using icing sugar - is there a simple trick I'm missing here

1. trying to split a cake across the middle in a straight line - I normally end up having to ice round the whole blooming thing to hide my wonky splice job - once again am I being REALLY stupid and missing something very obvious?!?

Get one of these

oohhh look at that

I was hoping you'd be on comeOVeneer

problem is having made 3 cakes this evening for work tomorrow I managed to do one in 2 x 20cm cake tins (my normal method for cheating) but the lemon curd one is 23" and I only have one tin so have to go through and slice it now!!

Ah if you need it for tomorrow that is no good (but buy one for the future). I do all my cakes with it, like you I can't cut a straight line freehand (nor can I slice bread evenly).

With the icing sugar I tend to pour it out under the extractor fan above my hob, tends to suck up most of the dust quite well.

god, I was doing the icing sugar on top of the glass cover for hob too - it never occurred to me to turn the fan on lol

have been meandering though that website and have managed to spend about £100 in my head - will have to run in order one of those and run out again without looking at anything else

the trick with bread is apparently to tuck your elbow in so your arm can't go 'wandering' hasn't improved mine much tbh

thank you again

I know. I actually have spent a small fortune on that site and others like it. I have 5 30 litre crates full of tools/equipment etc for cake making. DH jokes it has no surpassed my shoe obsession

30litre crates?!?!
thats is, am off to demand an extension

made chocolate buttermilk cake/ lemon curd cake and white chocolate cheesecake and they went down a storm

i know you didn't ask - but i jogsy chief taster

lol custy you're welcome anytime although I think ComeOVeneer may be a better bet for the tasty stuff than me, am but a mere dabbler using baking as a way of ignoring the housework