Scientists 3D printed this cheesecake

(CNN) Researchers have been pushing the boundaries of 3D printing for decades, using the manufacturing technique to churn out consumer goods such as furniture and shoes, human organs and even a rocket. But can industrial technology be used to create a pre-baked dessert that can be made in your home kitchen?

Engineers at Columbia University set out to do just that. A team whipped up a seven-ingredient vegan cheesecake that was assembled and cooked entirely by a 3D printing machine and — in a new innovation — laser technology, according to a study published Tuesday in the journal NPJ Science of Food.

The experiment was a step toward developing practical applications for 3D printing in mechanically assembled food, the researchers said. The machines needed to make and bake a 3D-printed dessert already exist — at least in Columbia Engineering’s New York lab — but There are not yet many cookbooks out there that explain how the technology can be used.

“If this (technology) were to come to market, it’s like having an iPod without MP3 files,” said study co-author Dr. Jonathan Blutinger, a mechanical engineer and postdoctoral fellow at Columbia Engineering’s Creative Machines Lab. “So there needs to be a place where you can download recipes, create your own recipes and get some inspiration for what you can actually do with this machine for it to really take off in a big way.”

Blutinger acknowledged that the concept of 3D printing food can be offensive to people.

“There is maybe a stigma associated with this word (3D printing),” he told CNN. “Usually with printing, you think of an industrial process. (But) it’s important to realize that this is no different than cooking normally, except instead of chopping up the ingredients and all that, the machine basically puts it together in paste form.”

What’s new here

Using 3D printing – also called additive manufacturing – to make food is not a new concept. There is a company that uses the technology to make plant-based beef, and pop-up restaurants offer meals produced entirely by 3D printers. A start-up makes 3D-printed sugar, and the parent company produces machines for other entrepreneurs.

Kyle von Hasseln, CEO of Sugar Lab and Currant 3D, said in an email, “3D printed food could be as disruptive to legacy food distribution as regional servers were to the early internet.”

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What stands out about Columbia Engineering’s research is that it uses a laser to create the food while it is being printed.

“The use of lasers could be an important development,” said von Hasseln, “because the heat they provide can lead to a phase change from paste to solid. This phase change is essential for traditional baking, of course – think of putting a souffle.”

Creating a cookie slice was the next step in a year-long effort by Blutinger and his colleagues to develop different foods with a larger number of ingredients. His efforts started with learning how to bake various doughs with a laser and have progressed to developing a machine that can handle 18 ingredients and print and bake food at the same time.

And he said the method is demanding, allowing chefs to use extremely precise amounts of ingredients that can be baked or heated differently from moment to moment.

“It works great at the millimeter scale of printing, and you can just control it at a much higher resolution than you would (with, say, an oven or a stovetop),” he said.

There’s also the potential to cook to a person’s preferences: “You can kind of customize every little slice (of the cheesecake) if you want to.”

For this study, Blutinger and his colleagues experimented with a vegan cheesecake recipe, combining graham cracker paste and other ingredients to churn out a single, customized slice of dessert with flavors like cherry, banana, peanut butter and hazelnut spread. One slice took about 30 minutes to produce.

As for the taste, Blutinger compared the experience to Willy Wonka’s three-course dinner gum — the one that tastes like soup, then roast beef and finally a blueberry dessert that turns purple in Roald Dahl’s novel “Charlie and the Chocolate Factory.” Blutinger said his 3D-printed food offers similar glimpses of taste.

“You get these waves to hit your palate at different times,” he said. “And that’s a really cool part of the printing process is that you can actually locate flavors in the cheesecake.”

The future of 3D printed food

If the concept of cooking with a laser is worrisome, Blutinger added that it’s no different than heating food in a microwave oven or baking a dish in an oven with infrared coils. Most of the ingredients his research team used were also bought off the shelf in a grocery store, without any special additives.

However, Blutinger said he also hopes to explore a nutritional study to analyze how laser cooking might affect food at a molecular level. That, he said, could go a long way toward increasing the public’s comfort level with such a new method.

Another reason 3D printing hasn’t been widely adopted in home kitchens comes down to price: These machines still aren’t cheap. The device that Blutinger and his colleagues put together probably cost about $1,000 — not including lasers, which can be as much as $500 a pop, Blutinger said. However, he noted that the price of lasers has come down significantly in recent years, thanks in part to advances in Blu-ray disc players.

“I think the price point is getting into a more affordable point for a lot of people and for an actual commercial viability standpoint. I think in the next five years or so you’re going to start seeing this technology,” he said.

Dr. Xiang Zhang, a researcher at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology who works on 3D-printed medical devices, agreed that there is the potential for 3D food printers to make the leap from technological prototype to a widely adopted consumer product, along the lines of products such as Keurig coffee makers. And he said he’s excited about the concept of a machine that can print food while it’s being cooked.

Still, “there are challenges that need to be addressed,” he added. “You have to get the costs down to a level that is acceptable to most people. And then the food has to taste acceptable. … Just getting there can mean a long delivery time.”

There are incentives to adopt this cooking method, Blutinger said. He noted that 3D printing could allow nutrition-conscious eaters to produce foods with precise calorie counts or carbohydrate, fat and sugar content. The method can also help people who have eating problems, such as dysphagia, or problems swallowing, he suggests.

But Blutinger acknowledged that part of his obsession with applying 3D printing to the culinary world stems from his innate desire as an engineer to innovate.

“I think there’s always a longing to include software on previous analog technologies,” he said.

Fancy a cheesecake, but can’t wait for the machine? Here you go from our friends at the Food Network.