Pastry knives

Pastry knives – an excellent tool for dealing with your cakes

What is a pastry knife?

A pastry knife is a special kind of kitchen knife. It's long and elegant and is well-suited for slicing cakes and pastries.

What makes a pastry knife different from other kitchen knives?

The following features are characteristic of pastry knives and make them suitable for dealing with cakes and different baking tasks:

• Serrated Edge: Ideal for cutting pastry crusts neatly. When portioning delicate cakes and pastries, tiny serration is helpful.
• Long Blade helps in transferring cakes to and from the oven, cutting through sponge cakes and round cakes horizontally.
• Wide Blade: The broad blade is specially designed for cutting, dividing and serving cake bases and may be used to spread fillings like frosting and jam.
• Rounded Tip: enables easy and damage-free removal of cakes and pastries from baking dishes.

How should pastry knife be sharpened?

Due to the unusual form of its blade, a pastry knife cannot be sharpened with a conventional knife sharpener. Instead, you will require a ceramic honing rod, sometimes referred to as a sharpening rod. This is how to apply it:

• Find the bevelled side of the knife. Knives with serrations always have a flat and a bevelled side. You will sharpen the side that is bevelled since it is what makes it cut.
• A pastry knife must be sharpened by honing each portion in between the serrations, therefore there is sadly no shortcut. Repeat this process until all of the gullets have been honed by holding the honing rod parallel to the bevel the whole time while holding it flat against the angle of the bevelled edge.

If you are looking for more tools for baking and decorating cakes check our offer of decorating spatulas, cake servers and baking pans.

How to take care of your pastry knife?

Kitchen knives are quite an investment so if you want your pastry knife to last for ages, make sure you follow these simple rules for cleaning and storing your knives:

• knives are often dishwasher-safe but we recommend you clean your knife by hand as dishwasher detergents can damage the surface of a steel blade
• if a knife has a wooden handle, do not put it in the dishwasher
• to prevent wooden handles from becoming dry, regularly oil them with linseed oil or beeswax
• store your knife separately so that the blades do not get dull. Use a knife block or a knife case
• sharpen your knife regularly