Edible Ink Printing

A. Edible printing is both a consumer oriented process and developed for mass production workflows. It can be adapted for cakes, cookies, and cupcakes, as well as other edible goods. On the consumer end, it is a relatively easy process that can be done at home. Mid-level production occurs at companies such as Wegmans bakery department and other bakeshops who print on various baked goods.

• A printer, preferably purchased specifically for this purpose. Printing with non-edible inks will leave residue inside the printer that can be toxic, and a thorough cleaning may be necessary.

• Edible ink, supplied by manufacturers of inks of this type. They are sold either in ink cartridges that fit into a normal printer, or as ink refills for edible-ink only cartridges.

• Frosting sheets, these are thin enough to fit through the printer, similar to how regular printer paper is fed through the machine.

• Find or create a suitable image to print.

• Clean the printer (if it has been used with normal, non-edible ink previously). This will involve removing and cleaning print heads, and wiping down the inside of the printer where ink may have splashed. It must be thoroughly cleaned to use edible-inks safely. It is therefore recommended to use a dedicated edible-ink printer.

• Load edible ink cartridges into the printer as you would normal ink cartridges.

• Load a frosting sheet into the printer as you would a normal piece of printer paper.

• Print the image using your home computer. Settings will vary according to the printer manufacturer; it is recommended you follow the settings specified by the edible ink manufacturer.

• Spray top of the item you’ll be applying the icing sheet to, or apply a thin layer of icing. This will facilitate bonding between the printed sheet and the baked good.

• Carefully remove the paper backing on the icing sheet and place it onto the cake, cupcake, or cookie. Gently tap the image, starting from the center, to remove air bubbles.

Before purchasing your edible ink, be sure they are FDA approved.

The same materials are used in the small business development, as they were in the at home development process. A local Rochester bakery, uses an Epson printer, with edible Epson inks on “frosting paper” to put images on there cakes. This quick and easy method is very accessible and easy to maintain.

• First, a customer places an order to the size of cake he or she may want.

• Then, the bakery scans the image they would like on a regular scanner and puts it in the computer to size to the cake.

• From there, the image is printed on “frosting sheets,” rice paper, on the Epson printer, with the Epson edible inks.

• Finally, the image is placed on the cake to the designated area and size and the order is complete.

According to Saviao’s, there FDA regulations entails that the products are FDA approved and available to buy.

Recently, Wegmans has switched there printing process to a regular inkjet printer, edible inks and paper, from a spray on cake process. For there current process, Wegmans uses a system from DecoPac, which is an all in one system with a scanner, cd drive, monitor, printer and inks. For there past process, they used a system from SweetHeart, where the image itself was sprayed onto the frosting using an extendable arm. This process was recently recalled because SweetHeart was using recycled cartridges, and they did not meet Wegmans specific health standards.

• A customer comes in and orders a cake in the specific size, with there specific needs

• From there, the customer can either bring in a picture or choose an image from the book that DecoPac offers.

• After the image is printed, the paper is placed on the top of the frosting and then after about an hour, the paper has melted in the cake, and the image has become one with the cake.

Wegmans purchases there products based on the idea that the products have passed FDA regulations. The Wegman’s corporate food services do the testing to see if products are appropriate.

Mars Corp is a famous example of mass-production candy printing. M&Ms are printed to the tune of 2.7 million per hour, with a custom made machine. A conveyor belt with indentations sized exactly to the M&Ms carries them to the press. This press is specially designed to be very low contact offset printing, so as not to break the thin chocolate shell. Each candy runs under rubber etch rollers that gently press each candy with an M. The white ink itself is made of vegetable dye and there-fore fully edible. Up to 100 million M&Ms can be printed per day.

Confectionary and candy printing has evolved from a mass-production process to something simple enough to be done at home. Printing on cakes, cookies, and cupcakes allows for an amazing level of personalization and design on an otherwise inaccessible process. While the actual process of printing on baked goods has been reduced to rice paper, home inkjet printers and edible inks, these simple ingredients bring wonderful possibilities.