Angel food cake cutter. Kitchen Krafts / pixy.org / Public Domain
Angel food cake can get gummy and compressed if you use a regular knife and apply pressure to cut it. For this reason, a special cutting tool that isn’t a knife has been invented for the cutting process.
An angel food cake cutter consists of a series of long tines, blunt at one end and at the other attached to a thin metal rod, which in turn is attached to a handle. The handles these days are mostly wood (which is why manufacturers suggest not putting them in dishwashers), but older ones will have handles made of Bakelite.
It sort of looks like an Afro comb with a side handle jutting out from the top. The tines will be about 10 cm (4 inches) long.
You insert the tines where you want your slice to be, then use it to pull the slice away.
This tool can also be used to mark squares in dough, or to punch holes in a pie crust that you are going to bake blind, though for either of those purposes a fork of course would do just as well.
See also: Angel food cake, Angel food cake day
Substitutes
Cut with a serrated knife using a sawing motion to avoid putting pressure on the cake.