My Success With The Cricut Cake With Pic And Tips!
Decorating By kileyscakes Updated 7 Mar 2013 , 1:20am by Goreti
After playing with my cricut cake I finally think I have it down. I thought I would share a picture and some tips for some people who have got theirs or will be getting it. I used wilton fondant with some gum tex added when I did mine and covered the cake in satin ice. That is all that I have tried but since I found that feezing it made the cuts cleaner I am thinking any should work. So here is what I did when I made the cake in the picture.
1. I applied shortening to the mat with a pastry brush, then rolled the fondant directly on the mat to a little thinner than a nickel, it doesn't have to be a perfect square or fit the whole mat, because when you go to cut you can move the blade to a starting spot and you can learn that in the cricut directions. Then I trim the edges where the fondant rolled goes over the lines on the mat so the roller does not roll over it, I didn't trim well enough the first time and some fondant rolled into rollers on the sides.
2. Put the fondant in the freezer for 15-30 minutes depending on how big of section you plan on cutting I found if I was just cutting a small piece less time, a larger piece longer time since you will be cutting longer it will thaw faster. Also freeze longer if the cut is really intricate.
3. Then while the fondant is in the freezer I go to the cricut and set it up to what I want it to cut so that it is ready right when I get it out of the freezer book marking pages in the cartridge book helps it go faster as well as writing down page numbers for what you want because letters are hard to find and so on. I found setting pressure on high and speed on medium worked best for me.
4. Take the fondant out and cut right away and try to go as fast as possible. I found that after it is cut and it thaws that it was just fine, also check your blade often to make sure it is clean. The fit to length button will let you set the image to how wide you want it to cut, I over read that when I was reading the book and that is really helpful especially when doing borders!
5. I decided on using Make the Cut for the program to use and I think I will be getting Design Studio as well It is easier to design on the computer than on the cricut itself. Make the Cut also has a wonderful forum on the Make the Cut website, so far it seems very easy to use and is on sale right now.
6. I aslo used the cricut cake with paper and cut some cupcake wrappers using a deep cut housing blade and the mat used for paper and they came out perfect. You have to have make the cut or a similar program in order to cut any files on the cricut. You can find all sorts of svg files on the internet and then you can just open them in make the cut and cut them on your fondant or paper! A great place to buy a deep cut housing blade is ebay and the mats are at walmart for like 12 bucks for 2.
7. I think I will be purchasing more mats for the cricut cake so that I can roll more that one color at a time and have them all in the freezer so then I just have to take them out and cut and that will make it go a lot faster.
I hope this is helpful for someone, I have only tried fondant and so far freezing it has made a huge difference, I wasn't doing that at first and was very discouraged. I haven't tried gumpaste yet but will be giving that a try soon.
Thank you so much for posting this!
You're cake is so lovely!
So... you would recommend purchasing this? I have ready lots of reviews and now I'm skeptical abpout spending such a large amount of money.
Yeah I do recommend it, I have to admit I was a little scared when I got it in the mail, since reading reviews and I knew it was going to be a challenge, but after playing with it I think that anyone should be able to get it to work. The main reason I got it was that I knew that it could cut paper too, so that way I could use it for scrapbooking and to cut my cupcake wrappers which was one of the main reasons I got it. I also got is because I have not been cake decorating a very long time and did not want to purchase hundreds of different cutters or stencils and templates to cut by hand, this in the long run saves me money and time!!!
Beautiful cake!!
BTW:provo craft has a machine called the gypsy that is like a portable design studio- I heard better things about it than about DS.
Thanks! I haven't got my Cricut yet (s/b delivered soon - I hope!) but I will save this thread, so I can avoid some of the frustration. So, you absolutely need Make the Cut - to get the most use of the Cricut? I was hoping to NOT spend any more money with the Wilton Tent sale coming up soon.
I have Make The Cut as well and it is so easy to use! There are lots of tutorials on youtube that were VERY helpful and I was doing exactly what I wanted to do with the program almost right away. My Cricut came with a cartridge and I am so glad that is the only one I will need!! You don't need MTC but it will save money in the long run.
It is definitely a learning curve..lol. I have played around with mine a little. Mostly with gumpaste. Used it for a border on a cake and it cut pretty good. I have been using NL gumpaste recipe with extra tylose. Rolling it out and letting it dry for about 15 minutes then cutting. I love it just for the letters alone. I used it for a monogram on a wedding cake today. I'll post a pic later.
Question. kileyscakes you mention getting the design studio software. Is it usable because I heard you can only play with it you can not actually cut unless you have the cartridge. Is this true and if so what the purpose of buying it. I want to know because I was going to buy it till I heard this.
FYI: When you use the computer programs with the Cricut the program controls the speed of the machine. Not the pressure, just the speed.
Sweet - With Design Studio you can share cut files (cut is the format of the file, like doc is the format for Word documents). The problem with Design Studio is that unless you have the specific cartridges that make up the cut file, you cannot print. For instance, lets say you get a cut file off the Internet that has grass, a dog and a flower. The grass is from Zoobaloo, the dog is from Doodlecharms and the flower is from Forever Young. Unless you own all 3 of the cartridges, you cannot print. Or if someone makes a beautiful floral border and shares the file, unless you have the cartridges that she made the file with, you are out of luck unless you own/buy the cartridges.
With Make the Cut, you can draw a flower of your choice, get it off the Internet, scan from a drawing/photo or create one on your computer and use it! It's that simple. With MTC, you can also print letters with any font that is installed on your computer. You can take separate elements and fuse them together to form one element. There is also a forum (like CC) to help you out (and then there are people like me on CC who are willing to help you too!). All you need is one cartridge in your Cricut for MTC to work. It doesn't matter what cartidge it is, you can use the one your cricut came with. I buy cartridges and use MTC so I get the best of both worlds. The MTC forum also has tutorials on how to make beautiful borders.
Let's say you have a client who wants his logo on the cake. With MTC you can do this. These cutting machines cut with amazing precision. I love my Expression.
Sweet - With Design Studio you can share cut files (cut is the format of the file, like doc is the format for Word documents). The problem with Design Studio is that unless you have the specific cartridges that make up the cut file, you cannot print. For instance, lets say you get a cut file off the Internet that has grass, a dog and a flower. The grass is from Zoobaloo, the dog is from Doodlecharms and the flower is from Forever Young. Unless you own all 3 of the cartridges, you cannot print. Or if someone makes a beautiful floral border and shares the file, unless you have the cartridges that she made the file with, you are out of luck unless you own/buy the cartridges.
With Make the Cut, you can draw a flower of your choice, get it off the Internet, scan from a drawing/photo or create one on your computer and use it! It's that simple. With MTC, you can also print letters with any font that is installed on your computer. You can take separate elements and fuse them together to form one element. There is also a forum (like CC) to help you out (and then there are people like me on CC who are willing to help you too!). All you need is one cartridge in your for MTC to work. It doesn't matter what cartidge it is, you can use the one your came with. I buy cartridges and use MTC so I get the best of both worlds. The MTC forum also has tutorials on how to make beautiful borders.
Let's say you have a client who wants his logo on the cake. With MTC you can do this. These cutting machines cut with amazing precision. I love my Expression.
Thank you sooo much! I have the expression too. So I can still use the design to cut out stuff in fondant, gumpaste or frosting sheets?
Kileyscakes...thank you so much for posting this. I just got my Cricut Cake yesterday. I have it all set up with your instructions printed out right next to it, waiting for the kids to go to sleep so I can play!!! I hope mine turns out as well as yours did.
Thanks for posting this! I havent had much luck with mine but I have only tried it once because it was such a disaster, lol.
Stupid question- if you freeze the fondant before you cut it, can you still reuse the scraps or are they too dried out/hard?
you can reuse them, they soften up in no time. Also I played with mine some more today and it seemed that satin ice didn't seem to do as well frozen I just used that straight rolled thin and was able to cut some letters out, but I don't think it will do very intricate details well. I think for intricate designs gumpaste will have to be used, I haven't tried that yet.
I finally mastered my cricut cake too!!! Made lots of small details for cupcakes this weekend. I used gumpaste rolled out paper thin, and let it set on the mat for about an hour and a half. It worked perfect. Ill attach a pic. The pressure was med. and the speed was med. (i think) Great Cake BTW!!!!!
What kind of gumpaste did you use? and did you roll it out by hand? Cupcakes look awesome!
I used satin ice gumpaste and first I rolled it by hand after putting it in the microwave it to warm it up, then I put in on the mat and rolled it out until it would not stretch anymore. It was very very thin, no thicker than cardstock.
Oh my goodness...now I'm REALLY excited for my cricut cake to arrive!! Thank you so much for all the info, it seems like it will be really helpful!! BTW how do I save this thread???
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