3D-printed sugar could be icing on the cake
Kyle and Liz von Hasseln have adapted the technology to design, digitally model and print original sugar sculptures – frosting – for confectionary, turning their company, The Sugar Lab, into a thriving business.A little historical perspective:
"It's such an exciting intersection between technology, food, and art. We've been getting excited reactions from all over the world," Liz von Hasseln said on Thursday. "When you see a 3D-printed sugar sculpture that's unlike any food you've seen before, its immediately clear that a whole new set of possibilities has opened up."
"The important feature of these recipes is that the resulting pastes were used to sculpture forms- forms having an aesthetic aspect but also preservable and edible. The eleventh-century caliph al-Zahir, we are told, in spite of famine, inflation, and plague, celbrated the Islamic feast days with "art works from the sugar baker, which included 157 figures and seven large (table sized!) palaces, all made of sugar. Nasir-i-Chosran, a Persian visitor who traveled in Egypt in 1040 AD, reports that the sultan used up to 73,300 kilos of sugar for Ramadan,- upon his festive table, we are told, there stood and entire tree made of sugar, and other large displays. And al-Guzuli (1412) gives a remarkable account of the caliph's celebration, at which a mosque was built entirely of sugar and beggars were invited in at the close of the festivities to eat it."
-Sidney W. Mintz- Sweetness and Power (1985), p.88.
I suppose the structural uses of sugar are less harmful than the metabolic ones. Maybe we can use it for recyclable party decorations. Dissolve them when you're done and make new ones. I'd like a tree, please.
