I’m going to be honest with you right now and tell you that if there is an easy way, or a short cut, or a lazy way to do something, I will find it. Just ask Paul about my housekeeping “abilities”.
Sweep? Isn’t that what a vacuum is for? Dishes? Dishwasher! Bleach? I don’t want to wreck my clothes!
When we first bought the Cricut Cake, I thought, “Awesome! No more hard work!” Boy, was I ever wrong.
Paul and I have filmed a tutorial on how to use a Cricut Cake, but before you go off an watch it, I have a little bit of stuff to tell you . . . let the honesty continue!
Background Information:
The Cricut Cake™ Personal Electronic Cutter is specifically designed for decorating cakes, cupcakes, cookies, and confections in no time at all. Just choose a shape, a size, and press “cut”. Decorating like a professional has never been faster or easier. (source) The idea of the Cricut Cake is brilliant. How awesome would it be to have a machine that would cut out whatever shape you wanted, in a matter of seconds? Cake decorators everywhere would be lining up to buy them by the truckload!
The Cricut Cake is different from the Cricut that scrapbookers use with paper, as all of the parts of the machine that come in contact with food are made from food safe plastic or stainless steel. Cricut also added silicone covers to protect the machine and to make clean up easier. Also, according to the Cricut website, the machine was specially designed for cutting food materials.
Our Experience :
If only it was THAT easy! First off, during the filming of our video, we had to stop at least half a dozen times to re-roll the fondant/gum paste because the cutter miscut, or started to snag! If we had decided to put together a blooper reel for this video, there would have been a LOT of *@# happening. I was NOT having a good time.
The Cricut cake is finicky. You must have your fondant/gum paste rolled out totally evenly, and it must be at the correct temperature. And what IS that temperature you may ask?? I have no idea, and neither does the fondant! You’ll only know when the Cricut fails to cut it cleanly, catches, and rips apart the smooth, flat piece that took so long to roll out for the 2938 time into 1882 pieces, that it’s at the wrong temperature! Usually though, the colder the better. Seriously, usually we pop the flatted piece of fondant, already rolled on the mat into the freezer for about 5 minutes immediately before cutting. It usually does the trick. Usually.
Once you have the cutter actually making the shapes and designs that you have asked it to, it is the BEST machine ever! The stuff that it cuts out is so cool, and so different from the standard, run of the mill cookie cutter shapes that you can make by hand. There are tons of different fonts available, and many, many different cartridges (theme disks). The cartridges are the same ones that you use with the regular Cricut.
Overall:
Definitely will test your patience.
Designs and creations are worth the pain.
Patience is required.
Patience. Is. Required.
Enjoy the video!
I am looking around before I buy my electronic fondant cutter but I am so confused with all the info from sites and blogs. Do you know if the cricut cake is the only machine that is FDA approved and is also certified to cuts fondant? Do you have any idea why they stopped making the cricut cake mahine?
Thanks for the tips!
I didn’t know they had stopped making it…weird. It must not have been a good seller.
I think you might want to lower the pressure to low. I read that you pop your gumpaste in the freezer…I do this before and after…so that it will come off the mat cleanly. I also go low speed…but maybe that’s my machine. yes, it’s finicky and I had many many trial and lots of errors…I also liked the icing sheets. They work well and are easy to apply. Saves time on rolling out gumpaste.
Thanks Stacy. We usually keep the speed on the low end of things, but low pressure helps snag the fondant/gum paste. We have icing sheets and have been waiting to try them out on the Cricut…thanks for the advice. Have you found that one icing sheet brand works better than others??