Nobody appreciates cheating or cheaters. I use to think printing cake decorations with edible ink and sugar paper was cheating. It wasn't really cake art or decorating to me. But throughout this past year I've come across a few applications of this process that seem to enhance cake art rather than diminish this craft.
The first time was on that TV show Cake Boss. Buddy reprinted family photos onto sugar paper and applied them to frames and a film strip for a memoir cake. The printing wasn't used in place of decorating. It was used as one element of the whole cake composition.
The next application I admired was at a sugar art competition in Austin, Texas. One of the competitors had started with a geometric pattern printed on sugar paper and then cut another geometric pattern within the printed. The finished decoration looked like colorful matching butterfly wings. The artist then folded and curled the sugar paper to make the wings look like they were actually flying on the cake. The unique pattern on the butterfly wings could not have been achieved without using a printed pattern. Simply Gorgeous! Again, the printing was used to enhance the art not replace it.
My first endeavor with printed sugar paper was not as creative or crafty as the aforementioned examples but was a fun process to experiment with nonetheless.
I also discovered that printing an exact replica of an emblem for decoration can show more honor for the recipients than trying to re-create it with frosting. Some emblems, signs or photos will be more appreciated and special as a printed image. Most of the fun of cake craft art is re-creating images, ideas and objects with cake and frosting, but there are some occasions when printing will be the most celebrated. I like to think of it as mixed-media cake art. Could there be such a thing?!
I love it!
C
