It might live in the bathroom and not the kitchen, but dental floss can be a helpful tool for cutting sticky and otherwise difficult to slice ingredients. Don't have floss around? Fishing wire works just as well! Try these three sneaky ways to use floss and you'll end up buying an extra container to keep in your silverware drawer.
1. Cheesecake
Slicing this dessert with a knife is a nightmare: A thick cheesecake sticks to the knife, so you end up dragging it through the rest of the cake. The result is a massive mess. Instead, pull out a strip of floss that is larger than the span of the entire cake and start by running the floss right through the cake, cutting it in half. From there, cut the remaining halves into as many perfectly sized and easy-to-slice pieces as you need. Wipe the floss clean before you make each slice.
2. Birthday cake
So much more of a pain than it should be: You don't want the individual pieces to crumble, but you also want them to be small enough so everyone gets a piece. The brilliant thing about floss: It allows you to cut cleanly and keep any design on top in tact.
3. Layer cake
Take a just-baked, cooled cake and create perfectly straight layers with a long piece of floss. Just hold the floss cross-wise and pull the string across itself: You don't have to spin the cake as you cut, or worry that one side will be higher than the other. The floss cuts cleanly and quickly.
4. Goat cheese
Soft cheeses are often hard to cut into clean individual rounds or slices (without smashing your log into an unrecognizable mass). Just use a piece of floss to create your neat slices, and you won't have any dirty utensils to deal with afterward.
5. Fresh mozzarella
There's literally nothing better than a ball of fresh mozz, but getting those beautiful slices you see in restaurants is next to impossible. Floss cuts easy through without turning the ball into a stringy mess.
6. Cinnamon bun dough
Once you've turned your dough into a neat roll, it's hard to turn it into individual buns and keep that beautiful round shape. Drag a small piece of floss under the log of dough, and bring the ends of the floss up to cross the thread at the top. Keep pulling the floss so that it crosses through the dough, cutting your perfect slices.
7. Cookie logs
Need to cut sticky cookie dough into ready-to-bake, even pieces? Sugar, chocolate chip, and even pastry dough can all be cut using a regular-sized piece of floss. And this way you won't have to wipe down your knife in between slices!
Have you trying using floss to cut cake, cheese, or dough?
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