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Step 2Bake a cake
You can get fancy when making your cake, but I was looking for simplicity (since I was planning on making a lot of cake to test on.)
I used an off-the-shelf cake mix, and made several chocolate, white, and yellow cakes.
But, I didn't follow the recipes exactly.
You see, in order to laser cut and then assemble our cakes there are several things that we need to do.
First, we need to make the cakes thin. If the cakes are too thick then the laser will heat up the edges too much while cutting and we'll end up with burnt cake, (yuck.) In order to reduce the thickness of the cakes you can simply use larger cake pans then the recipe calls for. In my case I used two 13" x 9" cake pans rather than two 9" x 9" cake pans.
Secondly, we need to make the cakes robust. Normally cakes are delicate and fluffy which is all well and good, but we're going to be manipulating our cakes so we want them to stand up well. In my case I increased the cake strength by reducing the amount of water in the recipe from 1 1/3 cup down to 3/4 cup. This also had the added benefit of reducing the moisture in the cake which led to better cutting by the laser.
After much testing I came to the conclusion that the white cakes are best suited for laser cutting. I'm not entirely sure why this is, but I would guess that it has to do with the fact that there is significantly less fat in the white cake recipe (less oil and no egg yolks.)
I used an off-the-shelf cake mix, and made several chocolate, white, and yellow cakes.
But, I didn't follow the recipes exactly.
You see, in order to laser cut and then assemble our cakes there are several things that we need to do.
First, we need to make the cakes thin. If the cakes are too thick then the laser will heat up the edges too much while cutting and we'll end up with burnt cake, (yuck.) In order to reduce the thickness of the cakes you can simply use larger cake pans then the recipe calls for. In my case I used two 13" x 9" cake pans rather than two 9" x 9" cake pans.
Secondly, we need to make the cakes robust. Normally cakes are delicate and fluffy which is all well and good, but we're going to be manipulating our cakes so we want them to stand up well. In my case I increased the cake strength by reducing the amount of water in the recipe from 1 1/3 cup down to 3/4 cup. This also had the added benefit of reducing the moisture in the cake which led to better cutting by the laser.
After much testing I came to the conclusion that the white cakes are best suited for laser cutting. I'm not entirely sure why this is, but I would guess that it has to do with the fact that there is significantly less fat in the white cake recipe (less oil and no egg yolks.)
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Nov 8, 2011. 1:36 PMhdunsterville
says:
Could it be that darker cake mixes contain more sugar, also? Sugar is highly flammable after all.
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