Sunday cake with a difference - pastries from the 3D printer

After much trial and error, layer by layer, a 3D printer created a visually acceptable, edible cake. With seven different ingredients, the pastry is likely to set a record for printed food, writes a team led by Jonathan Blutinger from Columbia University in New York in the journal npj Science of Food. The researchers put a lot of energy into building the cake so that it didn't collapse. "3D printed food has the potential to be the next milestone in the world of cooking," the team writes.

The project is far from the first in which food comes from the 3D printer. Although the approach is still in its infancy, there are already machines that produce specific chocolate shapes as desired. Others try to create meat substitute products that look as real as possible. Experiments are also being carried out with 3D printers for astronaut food.

The principle behind the applications is usually that a robot applies a kind of food paste layer by layer according to a predetermined principle. According to Blutinger and colleagues, only one or two different ingredients have been used so far.

For their cake, the researchers used, among other things, special cracker paste, peanut butter, Nutella, mashed bananas, strawberry jam and icing. The printing process was completely pre-programmed. Roughly speaking, the tougher cracker paste gives the cake structure so that softer ingredients like mashed bananas and jam stay in place. A laser carries out a kind of baking process on the almost finished cake. The researchers do not describe how the cake tastes.

3D food printers could offer private individuals the opportunity to produce their own individual food by programming the printer accordingly, writes the group around Blutinger. Shape and color as well as the nutrient composition can be freely selected. In addition, with the help of such printers, it is possible to place aroma and texture with millimeter precision.

However, according to the team, the machines will initially be too expensive for private use. Systems are conceivable in which the machine itself is comparatively cheap, but then ingredient cartridges from the same manufacturer have to be purchased. According to the researchers, a few things still need to be improved so that printed food can really take off. Among other things, it would need a large selection of printable ingredients and digital recipes as well as simple software to program the robot.

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