After a few months of traveling around the country, teaching classes, we are finally home for a few weeks. Now that we are back at the bakery, we are getting back into the swing of things and are getting caught up on blogging. In the coming weeks we have lots of new ideas and products to share.

ProvoCraft, maker of all things Cricut, including the new Cricut Cake has just announced a partnership with Martha Stewart. The machine and the three new carts, that bare her name, will be featured on HSN Monday, July 19th. The Cricut Cake, Martha Stewart Crafts Edition, on the inside is a replica of the original Cricut Cake, but will shed the red and get all dressed up in white. The three new cartridges are All Occasions Cake Art, Elegant Cake Art, and Seasonal Cake Art. While you may purchase any of the three carts separately, the All Occasions Cake Art cart comes with the purchase of the new machine. All of the carts are only available through HSN starting Monday. At the time of this release, no date has been set for when they can be found in your local craft store. A side note for those of you who would like the carts, but already have a Cricut Cake, all of the carts can be used with your current Cricut Cake machine.

Tobias and I got an exclusive sneak peak at the new carts and thought you would like to see what we came up with and what the carts can do.

Elegant Cake

This cake is a 3-layer 6-inch and a 3-layer 10-inch, covered in fondant. The designs are cut out of red and white gumpaste. We used the Elegant Cake Art cart exclusively on this cake. The white cut out flowers are highlighted by red using a hand painting method, as are the gumpaste roses atop the cake. White buttercream leaves are used to accent the flowers.

A closer look at the top tier ...

... and at the bottom tier.

Birthday Cake

This is a 3-layer 4-inch, 3-layer 6-inch, and a 3-layer 8-inch cake, covered in fondant. The designs are cut out of red, yellow, and blue gumpaste. We used the All Occasions Cake Art cart exclusively on this cake. To give more life to the balloons, we cut and then formed them, before allowing them to dry. The presents at the bottom are layered for a more dimensional effect. Although the cart does allow you to cut the ribbon and bow for the packages, we decided to use buttercream for a little more depth.

A number topper and 3-D balloons at the top.

The middle tier is fun to look at from all angles and is cut with the "Phrases" feature.

Another look at the middle tier.

The bottom tier features presents wrapped with buttercream bows - yum and pretty to look at. We covered the boards in fondant by the way.

We had fun getting to play with these new carts. If you do decide to purchase any of these carts, please read the suggested sizing guidelines found inside the instruction book. Although several images can be cut smaller than the recommended size, we found that a few images can not be.

Until next time … find a ways to stay inspired.

For the last 25 years, we have used an overhead projector made for cakes to help us do our drawings. This system was a light box that slid up and down a pole to adjust the size being shown on the cake. It is great when doing images on 1/4 sheet and 1/2 sheet cakes, however we had problems when doing larger cakes that needed to have the entire space filled. Even on smaller cakes, we might have to shrink or enlarge the image if the pole adjustment was not enough.

A few months ago I needed to draw on the side of the cake, which our current system did not allow. The only thing I could find was the projector that we use in our store meetings. It worked like a charm. I thought this would be great to replace our current system for drawing on cakes. So after several days of trying to figure out how to best hang the projector from the ceiling, we decided to use a movable, wall mounted TV bracket (they are normally used to hang flatscreen TVs). This allows us to move the image left, right, back, and forth. We also purchased a small notebook computer, that is hooked to the projector. This allows us to download customer photos and use any of our purchased clip art images at any size we need.

We are using an InFocus brand projector and a HP Netbook. Any projector should do for this however and they are available online starting at about $300. The Netbook was around the same price and the bracket adds another $100.

The desktop shortcut connects straight to the folder on the server where all drawings are stored. Once the image for the drawing is opened it is projected directly onto the cake.

As you can see I can simply reach up and adjust the position of the projector and therefore the image. This also allows me to move the image without moving the cake, which our old system did not allow.

The best part - since it is a daylight projector (meaning made to be used in presentations without having to dim the lights) it works just as well with the lights on as it does with the lights off. The projection on the cake is also more vivid, making drawing much easier.

Until next time don’t forget to always eat from the four food groups: dark chocolate, milk chocolate, white chocolate, and chocolate truffle.

We've gotten tons of questions on what we have done with the Cricut Cake - so here are some examples of what we have cut out, from cookies to cupcakes to cakes and much, much more.

Wedding Cake

Birthday Cake

Cupcakes

Petit Fours

Cookies

Sheetcake

We are working on some tutorials on how to do purses, cookies, Mother's Day projects and much more - stay tuned and remember to Be Sweet!!!

The ABE 2010 in Atlantic City was as always so worth the trip (even though I can never seem to catch a flight into Atlantic City - what's up with that?). First of all a big thank you to the New Jersey Bakers Board of Trade and the New York State Association of Manufacturing Retail Bakers for putting the show together as well as the Retail Bakers of America for organizing a great educational track. Tobias and I attended quite a few great sessions, including one by Master Decorator Ron Ben-Israel and one by Katie Martin, Chief Editor for Modern Baking Magazine. We also ran into a quite a few promising new products, as you can see below:

DecoPac announced about a month ago that they teamed up with TV-great Duff Goldman to release a series of Duff-branded products. We found Duff Food Color and a Duff Artist Starter Kit at the DecoPac booth. Notable are certainly the color names, which are as extraordinary as the Ace of Cakes himself. Duff colors are available in Waimea (blue - apparently named after the blue water at the beach by the same name on Hawaii, in case you're wondering), Lobsta (red), Submarine (yellow), Hash (brown), Vinyl (black), Benjamin (moss green), Amped (orange), 1999 (violet), Eighty-eight (ivory) and Chronic (green). The Artists Starter Kit reportedly includes a Duff sketch book with three cake templates for round tiered, square tiered, and topsy turvy cakes, a set of color pencils, metallic markers a carry-all bag.

Also in the Duff Goldman Line are complete cake inspiration kits, the Rockstar version can be seen here. I understand it comes with guitar headstock, flames and guitar picks all made out of gumpaste as well as music danglers and dangler wire to go with them - just airbrush and go. It should be interesting to see these hit the decorating scene in the coming weeks and months.

Also new from DecoPac is the Disney Cinderella Wedding Cake Kit. It includes Gum Paste Gems, Swags, Rhinestone Trim, Pearl and Rhinestone Flowers, Brooch, Cupcake Wrappers, Wedding Plastic Dowels, Cake Boards and Silver Foil Cake Drum. Just add cake, buttercream and some fondant and you're good to go.

One of my favorite finds are these ready-made edible gems, they are called Cake Crystals® and are available at www.cakecrystals.com - I picked up samples that I have yet to try, but they look adorable. I will have to try these on our crowns ...

More news in the "BLING" department - Gold, Silver and Pearl Glaze designed with fondant in mind. These glazes are freeze/thaw stable, have great coverage and can be tinted with gel color (all of which we will try when we get some). Knowing the age old struggle of decorators with realistic metallic colors, this may add a new weapon to the arsenal.

Speaking of new in the arsenal - if you are tired of tinting fondant, Satin Ice has come out with a load of new colors, including pastels. Kevin and his team are always at the cutting edge of things, so not surprisingly we love their products. I can't tell you how much white and black we already go through and their dark chocolate fondant is absolutely great for any wood effect. So we will be shopping the new colors soon.

Here of course is one of THE most popular colors, which is baby pink! As popular as that color is, we will definitely be ordering in some of that. While doing some background research for this post I came across this page (click or go here: www.rolledfondant.com/color.htm) on the Satin Ice web site, which provides a mixing guide along with the Pantone match. Tobias tells me that the Pantone system is one of the world-wide color matching standards, largely used by commercial printers and graphic designers - if you ever had a bride pick a color from across the country, you may appreciate this chart.

New Online Store

We added a new online store to the web site - largely because we have had so many requests for buying things directly. This gives us an easy way to make products accessible to our readers. You can rest assured that we will not add any products to the online store that we would not use ourselves here at the bakery. The store is also where you can register for our classes. And of course, if you do purchase products from us, they come with a username and password to access our tech support area on the web site - in other words we will help you troubleshoot and solve problems, first online and if need be on the phone. Anybody who knows us will tell you that neither Tobias nor I have a problem taking calls if someone is in a bind - even if it is 3am and you forgot that you in a timezone 7 hours ahead of us (you know who you are - haha).

Deep South RBA Meeting

As we are in the process of wrapping up Easter week, thankfully it has been a very successful one, I am in the process of preparing for the Deep South RBA workshop at Paul's Pastry Shoppe in Picayune, Mississippi next weekend. Tobias and I will be doing a 1-hour session on all things Cricut Cake, Tobias has a session on Social Media and my dad will report on our Ultimate Cake Off experience. The educational track includes decorating and business sessions, so if you can get there and you have time next weekend (April 11-12, 2010) it's definitely worth the $80 non-member registration fee. We will also hold the regional qualifier for the Pillsbury Creative Decorating Competition - by Monday afternoon we will know who gets to represent DSRBA in Las Vegas at the Nationals. Get more info about the Deep South RBA show by clicking here ...

Yesterday we attended the National Capital Area Cake Show in Fairfax, Va. We were looking for new products to showcase on the blog in the future. Below you get a brief overview from the show - we also took pictures of some great cakes that I thought were top notch, we will post those hopefully this evening. We had a blast meeting old and new friends.

Christine Schnee (www.TheCakeWheel.com) has come up with a new product called the Fondant Applicator - the combination of base place and center rod lets you hold rolled up fondant vertically and more or less roll it around the cake without the fondant stretching. Although she did not have a demo model, Christine was advertising a motorized fondant extruder, that they will be rolling out late this year. Now this is a product I would LOVE to see in action.

Scott Chapin at Cake Safe (www.CakeSafe.com) says his wife Juli has used the CakeSafe for over 20 years and has literally doubled her capacity for doing wedding cakes by making the delivery process safer and easier. The cake he is shown tilting in the picture has traveled over 400 miles to the show and looked no worse for the wear. I think we might field test this product soon - it sure looks interesting and could make deliveries much easier if it works as advertised.

Sue Helfrich with Provo Craft (www.cricut.com) was at the show to introduce the Cricut Cake to the ICES members. Her demonstration on how to cut shaped out of the Cricut Cake frosting sheets and gum paste surely captivated the audience and the booth was packed for a large part of the day. We got to visit with Sue for a while and exchanged some great info that you will see on the blog soon.

Mike with Mike’s Amazing Cakes (not "that" Mike, but Michael Lund, the Director of Sales and Education for Cake Decorating celebrity Mike McCarey, who IS "that" Mike) tells us that they are working on a brand new DVD for their Cakenology series. The cake structure dvd should be out by the national ICES show. The Cakenology DVDs are amazing and we have both of them. Tobias used some of the techniques shown in the 3D car cakes DVD to carve the monster trucks on the Ultimate Cake Off - see more of Mike's cakes at www.mikesamazingcakes.com.

Cakes from the ICES show

Dorey Williams - Lincoln Park, MI

Silvina Barboza - Franklin Park, NJ

Susan-Victor Bezares - Catonsville, MD

Mary Jo Dowling - Westford, MA

Kari Melen - Severna Park, MD

Gisela Lucca - Haymarket, VA

Mary Jo Dowling - Westford, MA

Mike Elder - Kansas City, MO

Rose Andries - No location listed (Rose or someone who knows her, if you read this contact us with your location)

Bonnie Massimino - Brookeville, MD

Today we will be at the ABE, American Bakery Expo, in Atlantic City, NJ. We will again be looking for the next cutting edge cake technology, so we can share it with you on tomorrows blog. If you are in the area we will be giving a demo on the Cricut Cake at 9:45 am. It is a free demo with the registration into the ABE ($30). Until tomorrow do what Tobias and I did last night as we waiting an hour and a half for our table at PF Changs…….Eat Dessert First……It was great!!!!

Thank you all for being so patient with us as we did our second round of tests. Both Tobias and I work 60-plus hours a week and "play" after we get done with our day jobs. So again, thanks for patiently waiting. This time around we tested Lucks edible image sheets, MMF (Marshmallow Fondant), three types of cheese, cookie dough, paper, Sugarveil, Chocopan and Fondarific. You can find the results below. In this entry, we also wanted to cover the issue of food safety. You will see that a few of the materials we tested were not done on the Cricut Expression, because of fact that the Expression is not food safe, we simply did not feel comfortable doing so, more on this issue below as well.

Larger Image Sugarveil, applied directly to Cricut sheet - .5mm: This worked extremely well and there will be future tests to see how creative we can get using this material. The Sugarveil was applied directly to a mat and cut after drying - as you can see the Expression makes a bit cleaner cut - the Deep Cut Housing seems to be better suited for the Sugarveil. Once we switch the Deep Cut Housing the the Cricut Cake, we get the same result on both machines. A side note: The best way to get the Sugarveil off the mat is a little Cricut tool we found as part of a scrapbooking toolkit (so handy, we felt it needed to be in the picture) - we tried palletknives and scalpels first, our usual choices, but neither worked this well.

Larger Image Sugarveil, applied to Silpat mat, then cut on Cricut sheet - .25mm: We applied the Sugarveil to a Silpat mat and transferred after drying, sticking it to the Cricut sheet with a bit of shortening. As you can see both machines provide the same result with their own blades.

Larger Image Fondarific Buttercream Flavor - 1.4mm: On the Expression the blade clogged immediately and started dragging, the Cake had no problem making the cut. Going thinner next to see if the problem is partially due to thickness - even though working with Fondarific much thinner gets a bit tricky.

Larger Image Fondarific Buttercream Flavor - .75mm: More clogging on the Expression, but less severe - again no problems on the Cake. The timed test on Fondarific proves in our opinion that it is less like fondant and more like modeling chocolate, therefore sets with temperature and not with time. If you read the list of ingredients (basically a lot like confectioner's coating minus the milk) and work with it for a few minutes you would probably agree.

Larger Image Chocopan - 1.4mm: A chocolate fondant product, the Cake again cuts fine, while the Expression has clogging problems. It seems that the slight stickiness of the product dooms the shorter blade in the Deep Cut Housing - the longer blade in the Cricut Cake does fine.

Larger Image Chocopan - .75mm: Marginally better results on the Cricut Cake, both machines cut without a problem. The slight distortion could probably eliminated by lightly chilling the sheet. The problem we have found with chilling is that condensation instantly covers the mat when it comes out of the freezer or refridgerator, making the surface too sticky to be of much benefit.

Larger Image MMF - .75mm: MMF still shows some major pulling on both machines - short of letting it dry overnight, this recipe is not going to work. Let me restate that if anyone has a different recipe, we would love to try it.

Larger Image Lucks Edible Image Sheets: Some really cool effects are possible here - we will definitely revisit this soon to push the limits a bit. Both machines work equally well. The edible image sheet was pulled off the backing applied directly to the mat in one test. In the other test we taped the sheet including backing to the mat and it worked just as well.

Larger Image Cheese - American 2mm, Provolone 2.5mm, Smoked Gauda 2.8mm: You asked, so here are the results - not sure if the reader is a cheese artist or just curious. As you can see, the Cricut Cake masters the cheese without a problem. Why didn't we try on the Expression? The thickness aside, we address the food safety seperately below. Side Note: the Smoked Gauda was 2.8mm thick and still cut (its what we have in the deli and quite frankly we didn't measure thickness until after the cut was made) - thicker than what the Cricut Cake is rated for, we are impressed with the clean cut.

Larger Image Cookie Dough - 2.5mm: This is the cookie recipe we use for our shaped sugar cookies because there is practically no spreading. Sheeted at 2.5mm, about a third of what our sugar cookies normally are, it cuts a little better frozen than it does chilled. To get the cookies off the sheet we refroze and they simply peeled off. See result below ...

Larger Image The result - possibly worlds first Cricut Cookies: Slightly overbaked (Ed, our baker, tried to get them out of the oven in time - we only gave him a handful of cutouts to bake, so there was no margin of error), it would not be easy to go through with this in actual production without tweaking a bit. In this case, the windows between underbaked and overbaked was at about two minutes. Having said that, a different cookie formula might make a difference - this would surely be the solution for odd shaped cookies that customers occasionally come up with.

Larger Image Paper We were asked to try a more intricate pattern on the Cricut Cake - something the Expression of course does without a problem since it is designed for just that. One of our CakeCentral readers forwarded her pattern for a cupcake wrapper and asked if we could cut it on the cake. We cut two cupcake wrappers out of the cardstock we have in the office (a medium weight stock that would do well for that purpose). The verdict - the Cake with the Deep Cut Blade cuts just like the Expression would.

The Food Safety Issue

Larger Image The Blade Housings revisited: The entire blade on the Cake Blade Housing is outside of the housing itself - between that and the rubber protector, there is little chance that anything will get into the blade housing itself. On the Deep Cut Blade Housing (made for paper, after all) most of the tip of the blade is actually inside the housing - not only making it easy to clog up, but also allowing some of the medium (gumpaste, fondant, cookie dough, cheese, whatever it may be) to get inside of the blade housing.

Larger Image The mechanics of the Deep Cut Blade: The button at the back of the housing pushes the blade out, while the cake blade basically only has one setting. This particular Deep Cut Housing is made out of metal (aluminum maybe?) - there are others on the market that are made out of plastic. The plastic housings seem to have even more problems with gumpaste sticking and clogging the blade. The Cake Blade Housing is made from a food safe and dishwasher safe plastic (it actually comes with a little dish washer basket for it to sit in). The reason we did not cut cheese or cookie dough with the Deep Cut Housing is that we would have no way to sterilize the inside of the housing after. While the gumpaste we use simply dries out, cookie dough and cheese are bigger hazards and definitely require sterilization. Some gumpaste recipes also call for other ingredients that are more prone to spoilage, so we are simply erring on the side of caution. The material difference between the housings is significant as well - per ServSafe (a food safety training and certificate program administered by the National Restaurant Association - their web site is www.servsafe.com), equipment surfaces that are exposed to food soiling or require frequent cleaning, must be "constructed of smooth, nonabsorbent, corrosion-resistant material", "free of unnecessary ledges, projections, and crevices", and "designed and constructed to allow easy cleaning and maintenance". The Deep Cut Blade does not meet these requirements, while the Cake Blade Housing does. The housing on the Cake is also designed to withstand the sterilization cycle of 172 degrees Fahrenheit, making it easy to just stick it in the dishwasher - we are not sure if we would try that with the Deep Cut Blade because of its moving parts.

Larger Image Inside the Expression: Applying the same ServSafe standards to the bottom of the Cricut mat path, it too must be "free of unnecessary ledges, projections, and crevices". The roller bar at the bottom, the crevices in the rollerbar at the top and the mix of metal and plastic make it much harder to clean. Side note: We are told by ProvoCraft that there are also non-food safe lubricants and oils that may eventually work their way onto the food - we are not about to take a machine apart and eat the lubricants, so we will take their word for it.

Larger Image Inside the Cricut Cake Smooth plastic surfaces make for easier cleaning. A smooth top roller and hidden bottom roller bar make is food safe. We are told that all lubricants used inside the machine are 100% food safe, which again we will take their word for.

Both Tobias and I feel that we have tested all the materials that need to be covered or were asked to cover. We will now move on and see how far we can push the limits of the different materials and techniques and of course the Cricut itself. If at any point we need to do more "scientific testing" we will address it at that time.

This blog is by no means all about the Cricut, it is about sharing cutting edge techniques in cake art. Therefore we will also be blogging about other new products and techniques - matter of fact we have had a few inquiries about testing other products and keep everyone posted. If there is anything that you would like to see covered or you have a product you would like us to try, please let us know. Until next time, remember ... your cake is dough.

This weekend Tobias and I tested other material in the Cricut Cake and comparing most of those with the Expression. Some of the materials tried are MMF with tylose, edible image sheets, cookie dough, SugerVeil, and cheese. You read that correctly, we were asked to try cheese. If anyone else wants us to try a different material, please send us a message via the contact us page. Since we spent the entire weekend cricut-ting, it will take us a couple of days to put together our findings, rest assured, they are coming as fast as we can possibly post them.

Cricut Questions answered

Are Housing Units Interchangeable? We have been asked if the housing and blade from the Cake would fit into the Expression. It does not fit the Expression. The housing for the Cake does not fit the Expression housing unit holder and the blade is also longer and thicker on the Cake, so therefore it will not fit into the Deep Cut Housing for the Expression. Although the blade from the Expression will not fit into the Cake housing, you can put the Expression housing into the Cake. I am including photos to show you the way each housing fits into the opposite machine. Hope this helps.

Housing Exchange: The Cake Housing Unit does not fit into the Expression, however, a deep cut blade in the Cricut Cake can be handy.

Can the Cricut Cake be hooked up to a computer? Absolutely - a USB A-to-B cable will do the trick and you are ready to use Cricut Design Studio, SCAL or MTC, whichever you prefer. The bonus is that the Cricut Cake is already equipped with the latest firmware and no upgrading is needed.

Will the Cake Cartridge be available separately? The Cake Basics cartridge comes with the purchase of a Cricut Cake, and only that way. Then there will be an Elegant Cake cartridge, a Holiday Cake cartridge and a Birthday Cake cartridge for now - we have seen a few of the images and they are really cool. And more cake cartridges are to come.

How to remove the sticky from the mats Once the cake mats are on the market, we can forget about this problem once and for all. In the mean time, we have been using Goo-B-Gone, which takes a lot of running and some time, however this weekend we came across a new solution. We have some 190 proof liquor for special airbrushing and painting techniques and Tobias likes to use it for cleaning because it works so well. It actually takes permanent marker off plexiglass showcase tags without a problem (saving the head of one of our salespeople in the process - why would you use permanent marker to write seasonal products on expensive tags?). So we tried it on the sticky mats and the glue just rolls off - be careful, the stuff is highly flammable.

Upcoming Cricut Cake Presentations

Atlantic Bakery Expo 2010, Atlantic City, NJ - Tuesday, March 23 - 9:45am-10:45am
I will be giving a 1-hour presentation at the ABE for the Retail Bakers of America (RBA) - the hour session is free to attendees of the ABE2010 (Admission to the show is only $30 - well worth it just for the education sessions in my opinion). Click here to visit the ABE web site.

Deep South RBA Show & Workshop, Picayune, MS - Monday, April 12 - Time TBA
The Deep South Chapter of RBA will meet in Picayune, MS and Tobias and I will be giving a one-hour presentation on using the Cricut in a production environment - we will post a registration link as soon as one is available.

We will be posting some tutorials in the next few days and we are also working on a detailed comparison between Sure Cuts A Lot and Make The Cut and some information about the food safe aspect of the Cricut Cake, so please check back with us soon. Until then ... Dream in Buttercream!

Sorry to keep everyone under suspense - the good news is that I finally had the time to "play" today.

As I have said before, we were asked to test the Cricut Cake for Provo Craft in a retail production setting. Our results will benefit them as well as the baking industry, so we agreed to "test drive" the Cricut Cake as a beta tester and put it through what we put our four regular Expressions through on a pretty much daily basis. We made it very clear to Provo Craft that all of our findings will be available publicly to the baking industry and that we would be unbiased - they agreed, since they are convinced they have a great product. Anybody that knows Tobias or I know that we are straight forward and even blunt at times and don’t play favors, so we will tell the good, the bad, and the ugly (if there is any) of both machines.

Today we tested three "icings" at different thicknesses on the Cricut Cake and the Cricut Expression. We tested Satin Ice Fondant (straight out of the bucket), the gumpaste recipe that we recommend, and modeling chocolate. We sheeted them out from .75 mm to 2.4 mm in thickness. *Please note that the Cricut Cake is according to Provo Craft able to cut up to 2.5 mm in thickness. We used speed 1 on all of the test sheets. The pressure had to vary from one thickness to the next and is marked with a P:____. To be fair, if we had to change the pressure we did so on both the Cake and the Expression. We timed in 5 to 10 minute intervals up to 30 min. If we thought more time would make a difference we cut at 30 min intervals after the original 30 minutes.

Larger Image Gumpaste - Thickness 0.75mm: Side by side there is no significant difference between the Expression on the left and the Cricut Cake on the right. We are getting clean cuts and next to no distortion - this is to be expected as the Expression works well at this thickness, so the Cricut Cake being made for the purpose does equally well. No surprises here. I get a bit more elaborate on the differences in thickness below.

Larger Image Gumpaste - Thickness 1.5mm: Still at a thickness that the Expression is designed for, the gumpaste pulls a bit if you try to cut it right away. This is pretty much normal. The cake blade masters the gumpaste after 10 minutes of setting, the Expression takes 20-30 minutes to achieve the same result. As you notice, the 1-hour cut on the Expression suffered from a clogged blade, something that happens with the Expression, which is why the blade has to be cleaned after every sheet - we cleaned the blade after every star just to make sure we start with a clean blade and as you can see it can still happen. More on this later ...

Larger Image Gumpaste - Thickness 2.4mm: This thickness was new to us, but the Cricut Cake was advertised to cut it, so here we went. The Expression simply is not designed for this thickness and we gave up after trying all settings - it did not cut all the way through, no matter what the setting. The Cricut Cake does fine after we find the best pressure setting and wait about 10 minutes. At 5 minutes we still get some distortion, which is again to be expected with gumpaste this thick.

Larger Image Satin Ice Fondant - Thickness 0.75mm: This fondant is straight out of the Satin Ice bucket, no CMC, Tylose or other additives. An unusual thickness (or rather thin-ness) for fondant, this cuts well on both machines. The Cricut Cake, likely due to the better housing, does well from the get-go, while the expression catches up after 10 minutes, almost providing an equally clean cut. After 30 minutes there is virtually no difference.

Larger Image Satin Ice Fondant - Thickness 1.5mm: At the outside edge of whats possible with the Expression, we get a lot of dragging in the cuts. As you can see, the Cricut Cake does surprisingly well - after finding the right pressure settings and waiting 35 minutes, the distortion goes away as the fondant sets a bit and we start getting a nice clean cut. This I guess answers the questions about cutting straight fondant - the Cricut Cake will do it.

Larger Image Satin Ice Fondant in Freezer - Thickness 1.5mm: Well, we try as much as we can and it has been suggested that freezing the fondant will help it cut better. If we are missing something, we will be glad to try again, but the results speak for themselves: The fondant turns sticky as soon as it leaves the freezer and makes a mess on the Expression. The longer blade on the Cricut Cake allows it to cut, but there is no reason I can come up with to freeze the medium before cutting.

Larger Image Modeling Chocolate - Thickness 1mm: Modeling chocolate runs equally well on both machines - no need to wait as it sets with temperature and not with time. Beautiful results all the way around.

Larger Image Modeling Chocolate - Thickness 2mm: A bit out of scope for the Expression, we figured we push the Cricut Cake a little close to the edge. Both machines cut the modeling chocolate just fine, a little drag on the Expression due to blade length, but other than that, beautiful results on both.

Larger Image Cricut Cake cutting Cardboard: So some people wanted to know if the Cricut Cake will cut paper - we had some cardstock laying around, so here we go. The cake blade doesn't really do well on paper - it cuts through, but the corners are not quite clean. This is what the Expression is designed for, so we didn't bother trying it. Interestingly, once we put the deep cut housing from one of our Expressions in the Cricut Cake, it cuts the cardstock like a pro and can't deny its heritage.

Larger Image The Result - Gumpaste at .75mm: The thickness is achievable with a pasta roller or fondant sheeter, but takes a bit of skill and patience with a rolling pin. The resulting pieces apply well and dry quickly.

Larger Image The Result - Gumpaste at 1.5mm: These pieces apply nicely and are easier to achieve with any equipment. They need a bit more drying time, but make for nice solid decorations for decorators of all skill levels. These will also stand up by themselves once dried and make for great toppers. We wi

Larger Image The Result - Gumpaste at 2.5mm: This thickness works well for 3-D shoes, crowns, plaques - anything where a bit of substance and structural support are needed.

Larger Image The Result - Satin Ice Fondant at .75mm: Not sure how easily this can achieved with traditional means - we basically sheeted the fondant straight onto the cutting mat using our Somerset sheeter. Even after some drying time the pieces are a little difficult to handle, but with lots of patience this could be done.

Larger Image The Result - Satin Ice Fondant at 1.5mm: This is a comfortable thickness for the fondant and would work great for decorating if someone doesn't like gumpaste. Don't think fondant will allow for too intricate of a cut, but we will try soon and see.

Larger Image The Result - Modeling Chocolate at 1mm: Takes some patience to lift off the cutting mat, but makes a great medium for pieces that can be shaped and set with cold.

Larger Image The Result - Modeling Chocolate at 2mm: Similar to the 1mm Modeling Chocolate, I really like this thickness. Will do some more experimenting with this soon.

Larger Image Deep Cut Blade on the Expression clogged: Here is what can happen with the Expression Deep Cut Blade - the medium clogs around the blade and gets pulled into the actual blade housing. The blade get stuck and can no longer fully retract, which results in dragging. Depending on the medium and other factors, this can happen more or less frequently. We clean ours after every sheet, and still we have clogged blades here and there.

Larger Image Cake Blade after a day of testing: Interestingly, the newly designed cake blade didn't clog once - didn't even get anything stuck to it. This looks promising for the high volume we occasionally run - nothing worse than a clogged blade in the middle of a sheet of 50 fleur-de-lis ... :(

Larger Image Cake Blade "uncovered": Here I pulled the protective sleeve off the front of the blade housing to see if anything made it in there ... squeaky clean ... Between the greater distance between the housing and the mat, the thicker and longer blade and the sealed blade housing, I'm impressed ... and going home for the day to post all of this.

About our observations: I hope that all of this makes sense. I know this is a lot of information to absorb, so if anyone has questions, feel free to contact us and we will do what we can to answer them. We will also be testing Sugar Veil, MMF, and any other "icing" you would like - suggestions are welcomed. We do not use MMF and need a recipe that might be conducive to the Cricut. We found one online, but it was too soft and did not work in either machine. Please be aware that if you share your recipe and we find it works, we will post it on the blog.

Thats it for today - Tobias and I are looking forward to your comments and suggestions. Until next time ... Dream in Buttercream.

I meant to post this last night, but didn't leave work until 10:30pm so when I got home I crashed. I decided what I would do is take pictures of the Expression and the Cake so everyone could see up close the physical differences.

Although I did use it to cut a few things yesterday, I was busy with customer orders so was not able to really "play" with it. I can tell you that it does cut different than the expression, but we will go into that later after some more "testing". The following photos show the outward differences between the to.

First and most obvious: the name and the color! Well, this one is a no-brainer, but made for a good introduction.

The cartridge on the Expression is sitting in a little dip, making it easy for GP crumbs and dust to collect (we vaccuum ours once a day). The Cricut Cake has a nifty sleeve that keeps GP away from the electronics.

The sled that the blade housing attaches to is made out of gray plastic on the Expression, out of metal on the Cricut Cake. I suspect that the inside has been overhauled since the test cuts that we made so far are slightly different from the Expression - no good or bad judgement yet, will need more than just a few cuts to determine that.

As you can see, the keypads and layout are the same on both machines - the difference is the cover that protects the keys on the Cricut Cake. Having had Tobias leave blue fingerprints all over the keys before (looked like Blues Clues gone terribly wrong) I like this - even though it could be replicated with some well placed seran.

The rollers are pretty much the same, even though they are food-safe on the Cricut Cake. The difference of course is that the rollers in the middle come standard on the Expression and need to be cut off, thereby voiding the warranty. If that doesn't bother you, the difference is 30 seconds with a nail clipper.

The bottom roller under the bar is visible on the Expression and tended to get a bit smudgy with icing and needs to be wiped several times a day - much easier on the Cricut Cake since there is a nice flat surface. Food safety here too.

The deep cut housing is a lot different on the Expression, compared to the food safe and dishwasher safe housing on the Cricut Cake (if we would ever find it again if we stuck it in the dishwasher remains to be seen). I'm not sure if I like the fact that there is no more depth adjustment on the blade itself.

The blades by themselves - as you can see the Cricut Cake blade looks more heavy duty - the housing also has a protective rubber bottom, which keeps it from clogging - a MAJOR drawback on the Expression. I can't tell you how many times the little hole gets clogged with GP and the blade simply starts dragging. Will have to see if the problem goes away with the improved blade.

Fresh out of the box - all nice and shiny. Starting to unpack - can't wait.

So this afternoon someone told me that a box from Provo Craft has been sitting by the freight door all day. I ran to see what they were talking about. Sure enough, IT IS HERE!!!!! Ladies and Gentlemen, fellow Cricut Cake friends and family, we are officially testing a Cricut Cake in daily retail production.

For those of you who would like to know if the Cricut Cake is just a glorified Cricut Expression, we will know soon. We currently run 4 Cricut Expressions in daily production to the tune of 6 to 8 hours on a busy day - so the Cricut Cake will have to prove itself.

I posted the first pictures of the Cricut Cake to the right and will post frequent updates over the next few days.

I am soooooooooooooo excited and can't wait to share.

Thank you for stopping by to look at our blog. About one year ago, we were approached by Linda McClure from Deseret Designs with a new technique using the Cricut Expression and wanted to get our opinion of it in a retail setting.

Number, incription and polka dots cut using the Cricut.

Linda was kind enough to come to our 10,000 square foot retail bakery and give us a demo on the Cricut using gumpaste. At first I thought that this would be great for us to just make monograms and numbers for the tops of cakes. If it could just do those two things, how great would that be? We tried every pre-made gumpaste on the market (over 11 different brands). Nothing seemed to work quite right. We finally decided that it would be better to use the recipe that was given to us by three different ICES members. It worked perfectly.....with a little trial and error of course.

Number, inscription, polka dots and palm trees cut using the Cricut.

We had to find that "sweet spot", the time where the gumpaste is just right to cut. We started with simple cakes, like polka dots and writing. It worked great. We were able to use any font we like by using the Sure Cuts A Lot (SCAL) program. Then a customer brought in a jumper suit that her one year old would be wearing at her birthday. It had palm trees all over it with pink bows and green polka dots. We used scanned in the palm tree into Adobe Illustrator and then moved them to the SCAL program. The cake matched the jumper exactly.

Scroll cut using the Cricut.

About 6 months after working with the Cricut, we decided to do a cake for the American Cancer Society benefit dinner. We came up with the black and white scroll cake. As you can see from the photos, we have used the Cricut for writing, numbers, polka dots, fonts, and scrolls. The possibilities are endless. We decided to create this site in order to share with everyone all of the newest products, trends, and ideas that we find in our travels here in the US and abroad.

Until next week........Dream in Buttercream!