How to Use Edible Ink to Print on Food?

Edible images are a great way of decorating cakes and other confectionery food items, such as cookies and pastries. If you are planning on making a customized cake for a personal or social celebration, then going for edible images can help you add to the fun and make the experience more enjoyable for you. Edible images are made using edible ink cartridges, which are placed in a standard printer like an inkjet printer.

In this brief guide, we are going to share with you all you need to know about edible ink printers and how you can use them to print edible images on confectionary foods. We have broken down this complete guide into 3 different parts that you can go over to learn everything about Edible Printing.
So, without further ado, let’s get started and talk about Edible Ink and how you can use it to print food

Part 1: Things You Should Know About Edible Printing

What is Edible Link?

As the name implies, the Edible Ink is one that is safe to eat. Edible ink is used for decorating various confectionary food items such as cakes, cupcakes, cookies, pastries, etc. You can use edible ink in two ways.

If you prefer decorating your foods by hand, you can use edible ink freehand to draw, paint, or spray on foods. You can use edible ink with things like pens, bottles, and other equipment to create different art pieces on foods. The other usage, which is the most popular one these days, is the use of edible ink in edible ink cartridges. With these ink cartridges, you can print pictures that you can eat on paper that you can eat, and then use those pictures on different kinds of candy.
Throughout the rest of this article, we are going to focus on edible ink cartridges and how to use them for printing edible images.

How Do Edible Ink Printers Work?

Edible ink printers are the standard printers that use edible, food coloring inks instead of the standard ones used to print images on a piece of paper. In most cases, a commonly used inkjet printer will work just fine for printing edible images. The output of edible ink printers might seem a little bit off, but you can adjust the color settings of the printer to get good-quality prints.

What Kind of Paper Do Edible Printers Use?

Edible printers use edible paper to print images. There are 2 types of edible papers that you can use in your edible printer
Icing Sheet: Icing papers are quite literally, thin layers of icing. These icing sheets usually come in vanilla flavor.
Wafer Paper: Wafer paper or Rice Paper is made using potatoes or starches. The wafer paper is a little bit cheaper than icing sheets.

Part 2: How to Use Edible Ink to Print on Food?

Now that you know the basics of edible ink, let’s go over the complete process of using edible ink to print on food. Here is how you can use edible ink to print on Food

1. Essentials for Edible Printing

Let’s talk about the absolute essentials first. If you want high-quality edible images, you need to make sure that you have all the essential items you need to make edible printing a success.
Here are the items that you need to have to get started with the process

2. Select Appropriate Food Ingredients

The kind of food ingredients that you use are going to have a huge impact on the result when you try and print the image on the food. For example, if you want to print an image on a cake, you need to make sure that the surface is kind of dry for getting the best output. If the surface is moist, the ink can get bloated and leave weird marks on the food.

3. Get the Edible Image

The next step is to get the edible image using the edible ink printer. The process for that is quite straightforward. You just need to make sure that you choose an image that goes well with the theme of the event.
Once the edible image comes out of the printer, you need to let it sit for about 10 to 12 minutes.

4. Transfer the Edible Image to the Food

Now, this is the trickiest part that you need to do with the utmost care. The sheet of edible paper has a removable plastic backing. You need to carefully remove it and then place the paper on the food.
Wait for about 20 to 30 minutes after applying the sheet. The image is going to get absorbed into the food. And that is about it! This is all you need to do to print an edible image of your food.

Part 3: Troubleshooting

Let’s go over some of the most common issues with edible ink and the ways you can resolve them.

Problem #1 Colors Don’t Feel Right

The edible inks are a little bit different in terms of their composition. So, the colors are not going to be an exact match. Still, you can try checking the ink cartridges and adjusting the color settings of your printer. You can also try using inks from a different brand.

Problem #2 Images are Way Too Dark

Use the Plain Paper settings, as they work best for edible papers. These papers are highly absorbent, so the printer injects a lot of ink into them. Using the default settings will make the images appear close to their real quality.

Problem #3 Cartridges Not Working

Sometimes, cleaning just the ink heads would resolve the issue for you. If not, you should check whether the cartridges are empty, or have ink in them. If the ink is there but the cartridges are still not working, you might need to change them. When you get new cartridges, make sure to cater to their regular maintenance for long-lasting performance.

Final Words

This is it! This is all that you need to know about edible ink cartridges and how you can use them to print different edible images of food. The use of edible ink might come off as a bit complicated, but it doesn’t have to be that way for you. The process is quite fun when you get the hang of it.

Just like everything else, using edible ink correctly requires practice. There is a learning curve that you have to go through to get good at using edible ink to print on food. Keep the above points in mind when working with edible ink. And if you have any questions about edible ink printers, feel free to reach out to us.