Printing on gumpaste like a frosting sheet

Guest Blogger Today!

My mother, Linda McClure, of Deseret Designs and Creative Designs for Cakes. Linda has been decorating cakes professionally for ten years now and is just a wealth of knowledge. She is constantly inventing new ways to make cake decorating a thing of beauty. Her largest claim to fame is using electronic paper cutting machines to cut gumpaste. You've heard me talk about it here and seen a few cakes I've done using this technique. She sells DVD's on her techniques at her site.

Today Linda is going to teach you how you can print pictures onto a sheet of gumpaste!


The printer I use in my shop is an Epson 1400 photo printer. I use it with food color cartridges to print frosting sheets. I also use it to print gum paste sheets, you can see me using it in the You Tube video. If you do not have a frosting sheet printer or do not want to run the risk of messing up your frosting sheet printer you can use a Cannon 2600 printer. It only uses regular ink, not food color. It costs $30.o00 from Wal Mart, so if you would like to experiment with this technique you would not be out a lot of money. The Cannon printer is for practice only.

I roll out my gum paste very thin, just like I would if I were going to be cutting out a design with an electronic cutter. If I need a large sheet of gum paste I roll it out with my fondant sheeter ( I show how to do this in my new DVD, "Damask Wedding Cakes").

I apply the gum paste to my plastic mat. You can do this several ways:

1) If you have the small Cricut you can apply the gum paste to your 6" mat. This mat will fit in the Cannon printer. Set the mat size and the area you are going to print from your picture program. Print the image onto the gum paste, just like you would print onto a frosting sheet.

2)If you have the Expressions, or other electronic cutter with a larger mat you can apply the gum paste to the larger mat. If you used a fondant sheeter you can apply a full sheet of gum paste to the cutting mat. If not you can roll out 2 six inch pieces of gum paste that are 12" long and apply them side by side. This can only work with the printer that can print a 13" wide mat. Set your picture program to print your image in the area that the gum paste is located. Apply it the same way as the 6" mat, using a fondant smoother to make sure it is applied securely and wipe off any excess shortening.

3)You can cut a plastic mat to fit the Cannon printer and apply the gum paste to it just like above. When you have printed you image onto the gum paste, let it dry a bit before taking it off to apply to your mat for cutting with the electronic cutter or whatever you wanted to do with the printed gum paste.

I use the plastic mats from the Dollar Store that are made for cutting food on. They are great for storing my designs on that I have cut out in advance of a project. I store the mats in a 2 1/2 gallon zip lock baggie.

Now you are not limited to a solid color piece of gum paste for your designs. This technique opens up a whole new world of design possibilities. So far I have had great success and I am excited to try new designs on printed gum paste.