Levelling and Torting a cake in it's tin.
You will need
A cake and the tin it was baked in
Bread knife, Various thickness's of cake boards/drums, Coctail sticks
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Levelling
Once the cake is cooled and ready for levelling, take the baking paper off from around the sides.
Use spare cake boards/drums slightly smaller than the tin and place them inside it.
You may have to add to or take away some of the boards, to get where the cake starts to dome, level with the top of the tin.
Using a bread knife and holding it horizontally use the edge of the tin to guide your cut, turning the tin as you go.
Take the top of the cake away and trim off any slight bumps still using the edge of the tin as support.
Torting
Take the cake out of the tin and using 2 or more cake boards, put them up against your cake. this will tell you were the cut will be so alter the amount/thickness of boards you use to suit.
Put the boards into the tin on top of the ones you used to level the cake.
Remove the baking paper if it comes around the sides of the cake and place the cake in the tin.
Cut as before keeping the knife horizontal, using the edge of the tin as a guide and turning it as you go.
Place a cake board on top of the cake and flip the whole thing over, remove the tin and boards.
Before removing the top half of the cake to fill it, put 2 cocktail sticks into each section, one directly above the other.
Split the cake ready for filling.
As you can see the cut is not perfect but DO NOT LEVEL IT! As long as you put the top of the cake back in exactly the same place it came from, your cake will be flat.
The cocktail sticks will help you to line it up and put it back together properly.
It's totally a personal preference as to whether you use the bottom of the cake as the top as I do, or chose to turn it back over and used the levelled top. Please bare in mind though that by using this method the top may not be as flat as the bottom.