Consider This Tip When Ordering A Costco Sheet Cake

Whether you've mastered creative hacks for cutting cake, or you're the kind of person to hand the knife over to the next person to slice it, here's a big tip the next time you order a sheet cake from Costco: request for it to be scored. A scored cake will have markings in the icing that account to individual servings that you can easily see and cut.

Using this tip will save you time and dignity. And you'll never encounter uneven cake pieces or — the worst cake tragedy of all — end up with fewer pieces than intended.

Bakers at Costco can pipe lines on top of the cake to create evenly-sized square sections, which acts as a guideline when you go to cut the cake. (So, no more eyeballing your pieces and hoping for the best.) Plus, you're guaranteed 48 pieces per sheet cake, making it easy for you to plan for your guests accordingly. The best part is there's no extra charge for this add-on service, and really 48 decent pieces of cake for just $24.99 is quite generous, coming out to just $0.52 per slice. 

To try this tip, head to your local Costco and request a special order cake form; then, check the box next to "scored" to indicate you'd like this preference. From there, you can have the bakers further decorate the cake, or do so at home by filling a pastry bag with icing and get to piping your favorite design on top. Just note, that if your sheet cake is scored, this might alter any visuals or wording.

While scoring your sheet cake is a valuable tip, its greatest downside is this: You can't exactly write atop your sheet cake while lines of buttercream run across it. This makes Costco's extra feature inconvenient if you need to deliver a message. However, you can remedy this by having an extra cake that's not scored, but decorated with the intended greeting.

This is a great option if you're hosting a large event like a wedding, where you know you'll need more than one cake any way. But, for birthdays, however, you may have to think twice about ordering your Costco sheet cake scored, unless you're ready to drop the "Happy Birthday" for the benefits of easy-to-cut cake.

Another downside is that serving sizes for Costco's scored sheet cake may appear too small for some, and small cake pieces are always grounds for complaints. The easy solution is, of course, to double the servings — you won't find too many grumbling about that fix.