You know, you don't have to believe everything you read or do everything you're told.

Keep it cold. Pull it out of the refrigerator and stick the candles in (make little pilot holes with a skewer or pointed chopstick if the candles aren't up to the task). Sing your song, have the guest of honor blow out the candles, pull them out of the cake and start cutting.

The alternative is to cut the cake in advance but leave it intact, do the whole candle/singing thing, and then put the pieces on plates. You often see beautiful pre-cut cakes on dessert carts and in bakery cases, and they certainly still look good enough to sing over.

Either way, you will want to dip a thin carving knife in hot water and quickly dry it off before each cut. If the cake is on a perfectly flat plate, you may find it effective to cut all the way across the cake with a length of dental floss, though it can be hard sometimes to get it all the way to the bottom. Whatever method you use, you'll be able to get that cake on separate plates very quickly. You would have had to do all this anyway to serve it plated as demanded by the recipe.

And not to put you off the recipe in any way, but this concoction is not really a torte. If pressed, we would have to call it a pudding.