Hey Besties! This post has been in the works for a long time and I’m so excited to share the best printable edible paper, printer and other supplies needed to take your baked goods to the next level! I’ve received a lot of requests for this topic given the huge demand for more personalized, custom and logo designs. We all know the amazing designs and artwork that sugar can create, right?! But being able to incorporate printed images opens up a whole new level of possibilities. And until recently, being able to have this capability from home proved to be either really expensive or poor quality in flavor or look. Which is why I’m thrilled to share my setup for printing edible images at home and on a budget! Let’s dive in!
Edible Printing Options
Regardless of whether you specialize in cookies, cakes, cupcakes or all the goodies, I’m sure you’ve ran into a scenario where you wanted to be able to incorporate a photo or image into a design. After all, consumers are all about one-of-a-kind goods, so the more personal, the better. And maybe you’ve researched some options, but it can get overwhelming and daunting pretty quick. Also recognizing that adding this capability can be an investment for a home baker, you want to get it right. Fortunately you’ve got your bestie here who researches everything to death (just ask my hubby) so I’m making this simple for you.
If you’re a cookier, you’re probably familiar with Eddie, the printer that prints directly onto the surface of a flooded cookie. Eddie can do incredible things and a lot of cookiers love their Eddie printers! But Eddie also comes with a price tag of about 3K (USD) which puts it out of reach for many home bakers. Those who love it can commonly justify the price tag by the additional designs they can offer. If printing directly onto a cookie is what you want, I encourage you to check it out! That said, while it is an amazing piece of technology, it’s not the only way to be able to have images on your baked goods. With the price tag and the learning curve, it may not be the best option for you and that’s okay, there are alternatives!
You may or may not know, but there are many Canon printers that can be used with printable edible paper and ink to print images from home! And before you think, “Bestie, do those really taste good?” I’m happy to report that there are products that taste delicious! You can easily and affordably print images at home that will add endless design options and still ensure flavor perfection.
Edible Printing Setup
I knew I wanted the ability to have designs with images but also knew I wasn’t interested in the Eddie. Maybe in the future, but for now, printing edible images is perfect for us! I don’t even want to think how many countless hours I spent researching printers, ink, edible paper and techniques. But it all paid off because now we have a setup we LOVE! I had a few requirements which drove my purchasing decisions. First, it needed to be affordable. I had arbitrarily set a price of $300 that I wanted to stay under for this setup. Pssst…we stayed well under that! Secondly, it needed to produce high-quality, beautiful images. Third, it needed to taste good! And lastly, it needed to be pretty easy to use. Technology and I don’t always see eye-to-eye so user-friendly is always a criterion for me.
Printer
After much research, THIS is the Canon printer we went with for our edible image setup. Setup was a breeze and it’s been working seamlessly. At the time of this writing, this printer is $79.99 which is very hard to beat! It prints beautiful images – both logos and photos with precision. Note that when using a Canon printer for edible printing, you need to use a new printer that has never used regular ink. So unfortunately, you’re not able to convert an existing printer to edible printing. But at this price, it’s an easy investment!
Edible Ink
Next, THIS is the edible ink that we use and love. Again, many hours of research went into these decisions and actually, I wasn’t happy with the first brand we purchased. But THIS one has been a winner and very affordable too!
Printable Edible Paper
The third critical item is the printable edible paper! We love THESE icing sheets for their flavor and how they absorb the color. There are cheaper wafer or rice paper options out there that are printable but, in my experience, you sacrifice flavor and quality. THESE are thicker than you’d expect but are basically sheets of frosting, which you will smell when you open the resealable package. Honestly, we have a house of picky eaters and people who get weirded out by “consistencies”, but these are great! I was actually very pleasantly surprised the first time I sampled them on a cookie.
At this point, we have a full printable edible paper, printer and ink setup for $155! 😮 I was ECSTATIC to be able to add this capability to our home bakery for half of what I thought we’d need to spend. And I knew other home bakeries would LOVE the affordability and results of this setup too! Next up…how to use it!
How To Print Edible Images At Home
I use Canva to format my images and it works perfectly! In today’s example, I’m making 3″ round cookies and adhering 2.5″ images. If you open a new design in Canva and go under Elements and then Frames, there are tons of shape options you can add to your page. You can then resize them however you’d like based on what you want for your cookies. It’s then very simple to just drag, drop and edit your images in the frames. Then I save as a PDF file to my computer before printing. Here is the file I used to print today’s sample cookies! Meet our dogs and some other fun logos!
You will then simply print onto a sheet of your printable edible paper. For these circle designs, we use THIS 2.5″ hole punch which is efficient and works perfectly. When we have other shapes, such as rectangles, we use kitchen sheers or our pen blades to cut out our images. Here is what these looked like once we used the hole punch!
How To Add Your Images To YOur Baked Goods
There are several different methods bakers use to adhere their printed images to their goods. We’re going to specifically focus on adding these to cookies using royal icing today. We have not used our edible images with buttercream but I imagine it would still be very simple. Ultimately, the images kind of become part of the icing once they are set.
Our preferred method is to adhere the images to the cookie using royal icing as ‘glue’ onto a completely dried, flooded cookie. Some cookiers apply the images to wet flood and have success, but in my experience, the image rippled or curled. Many cookiers apply the image like we do but use corn syrup as the glue. Full transparency: using corn syrup as the glue really turned me off, which is why we prefer to use royal icing. I also know another cookier who uses a steamer to dampen the surface of her royal icing and adhere the image. Point being, you’ve got options and you’ll discover the method you like best! But I’ll demonstrate the method that we use most often.
Starting with dry, flooded cookies!
Next, I use a medium consistency royal icing, just so it’s not too runny, and pipe some onto the back of the edible image. Remember in kindergarten with the Elmer’s glue? Just like that. And then adhere to your cookie, smoothing out the image. I then set them upside down to dry flat.
After about an hour, they will be pretty set and will look like this!
And while these look nice, I prefer to add some kind of border around the image just for a nice finishing touch. In today’s example, I added a thin piping border and sanding sugar. But of course, there are many different ways you can add finishing touches to these custom cookies.
Having the capability to create and offer goods with images opens a huge door for your bakery! There’s just something people love about seeing an actual photo or image on a delicious and beautiful cookie! And for a business, this presents endless marketing options for their customers and staff.
I bet you didn’t think you could be offering this for an investment of only about $150! Neither did I! But I’m so happy my seemingly endless hours of research paid off! I LOVE being able to drop off cookies with funny pictures to my friends. Or when a business owner gets excited about their logo cookies, it makes us so happy!
I hope this post all about creating an edible image printing setup at home was helpful for you! Feel free to leave a comment or join our private fb group if you have any questions!
And make sure you’ve subscribed to receive our weekly newsletter! Never miss out on more edible image ideas, inspiration, recipes, product recommendations or Featured Bakers! Happy Baking, Besties!
How can I purchase the printer bundle
Hi! I linked to all the specific products available on Amazon. Thanks!