Problems Only Left-Handed Cakers Understand

I’ll be honest. Being a leftie, in a right handed world is fairly okay most of the time. But when it comes to cake decorating, holy crap do we have issues! Where do I even begin? The obvious problem we have is writing on cakes. It’s like writing on paper, except a thousand times harder! It’s like that for everyone. We all feel like we are playing a game of Operation, where the sides are invisible, and we just have to remember where the edges are. As a leftie, you need to also deal with the fact that you can’t see the parts you have already piped. Why? Your hand is in the way! Always!! You can only see 8 letters ago. You have no idea if you are even headed in the right direction. Add to that the fact that you smear the entire thing if you even think of turning your hand to look. So for the first fifty times, you pipe upwards, worse than a 1st grader, and it does’t even matter, because it’s all ended up on the side of your hand anyway. Welcome to the land of Leftie hell..

Every time you try to use a bread knife to shave down a cake, it cuts off 3 inches. Apparently both sides of a bread knife are not equal, and if you do manage to find one that you can use, buy 5 of them, and use one until the damn thing breaks! Because you my friend, have found a magical unicorn knife that was blessed with some fairy shit, and you better not lose it!

Baking is a huge drama. You don’t think so? Well I guess you’ve never thought about having to stir hot sugar syrup into a Kitchenaid with the splatter screen on because your meringue frosting is being beaten to high heaven. Use your right hand you say? Really, okay, you use you left hand and try to pour skin searing hot sticky syrup into a whirling mixer going at a level ten, and only having a space of a few inches to pour it in. Go on, I double dare you! JK, I don’t dare you. You will end up in the ER, and I don’t have enough money to pay the bill. After all, I make cakes.

You can’t even buy those funny cake/ cupcake related coffee mugs, because the writing is on the wrong side. “Hey! Look at my mug!”, “oh wait, you can’t”. Moving on..

Then you want to learn how to pipe flowers. It’s all going fine, until you stumble upon some cute curved piping tips. They look interesting! Wait, they’re back to front.. Oh, they make left handed versions! But, they are never in stock, and certainly not available for every design. So I guess I’ll never be making those. Wonderful, I’ll just stick with my good ole 104 tip then.

Most tutorials show you the right handed way and for some crazy weirdo reason, lefties don’t always “just do the opposite”. Although, apparently when shown the left-handed way, righties can manage to “ just do the opposite” just fine! As a teacher, I’ve had to learn to pipe with both hands, which took about a year to master, but anytime I watch a right-handed person pipe, it makes me feel kind of sea sick. Like they are just spinning it around, and around, and it’s not even going in the right way. I just can’t! That’s why I pipe everything completely different to pretty much every other person in the world.

You can’t even just buy a big fancy cake leveller. You have to turn the blade around, or not hold it by the handle. VERY difficult when you work with a bunch of right handed people. So I’ve had to hold a cake leveller backwards for most of my caking life. All I’m going to say is that they add a handle section for a reason. Not using it, hurts! 40 cake layers later, I have calluses on my hands that last until the next week, when I’ve got to do it all over again. Yay for lefties!!

Did I miss anything? Leave a comment below and share your tales of woe with us.