Take a typical round (cylindrical) cake and cut a chunk out. Return the next day to do the same... repeat...
Cakes dry out primarily at their exposed surface. So ideally, one would want to cut the cake so that at any given time the total exposed area is minimized.
For the first cut, a (nearly) semi-circular cut seems best, as that gives the minimum surface for removed volume. But the second cut would be to enlarge the existing cut by removing a C-shaped piece. But that doesn't work all the way, once you get about half way it seems the cut should be straight across.
My feeling is that you cut increasingly straight curves until half the cake is gone, and then increasingly curved again past that.
Is there an obvious algo here?