how much is reasonable to pay for the following . . . ?

[lucysmam]

a cake smoother? for icing & I've seen something on a cake decorating website for flattening the tops of cakes before you decorate them (it kind of looks like a cheese wire on a hacksaw & cuts the top off iirc)

Does anyone have any idea what's reasonable, before I go spending a fortune when I don't have to?

Ta

just use a knife

I have been doing but struggled a bit to get it to go all the way through without sawing at the cake & it ended up looking untidy & uneven

This is a cake smoother and a knife won't work. That price is pretty much average.

thanks Maureen, much appreciated

Not sure what you call the thing that you are talking about, but I suggest cutting it as near as possible to be even and then (and this is the clever bit!) turn the cake upside down! Perfectly smooth, flat and beautiful edges on the bottom!

ooooh, yeah, clever! Thanks again Maureen, I'll do that tomorrow afternoon. It's the most obvious soloution ever but never even occurred to me to turn it upside down for flat edges & a smooth top

LOL And there's you thinking I can make perfectly smooth cakes! I figure that by the time someone has cut into it a dozen times, they won't notice the masacre that I created on the bottom!

well, I did wonder how cakes were sooooo smooth on top! Turning over does seem to make more sense than struggling to get a perfect straight top. Plus it'll probably only last a day or so anyways so makes more sense to worry about the top being pretty & forget about the bottom I guess

Try at Lakeland they sell a cake smoother/slicer will adapt to different size cakes and slices the top off to create perfect smooth tops.

that was the kind of thing I was looking for, thank-you paranoid, but Maureen has let me in on the turn your cake upside down secret so I can save my cash on that & just get the smoother for the icing