BUDMEN INDUSTRIES PRESENTS
3D Printed Food
When a pastry chef meets a 3D printer, desserts become answers to curious questions.
QUESTION NO. B-CP8I766-1801
WHAT IF YOU COULD 3D PRINT FOOD?
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THE INTERSECTION
Stephanie had spent years working as a pastry chef in Chicago—in bakeries, for Michelin-star chefs, and in all sorts of culinary environments—perfecting and honing her craft. When Stephanie and Isaac started working together, there was a natural intersection their curiosity needed to explore.
Food and 3D Printing
At the time, not many people had explored this intersection. We were
drawn to it.
What would 3D printed food look like? What would it taste like? How
would it even work?
We had questions. We needed experiments.
Finding the Right Medium
We started by asking ourselves: What ingredients could be conveyed,
placed, extruded, plopped, dropped, or manipulated by a robot?
We made a list. We identified what could hold structure, what could
be extruded, what could be plopped.
Pastes!
Paste could work. And there are lots of delicious pastes in the
world: frosting, meringues, hummus, pie crust dough. All sorts of
delicious ingredients that are pastes.
We had our candidate medium. Now we needed to test it.
The Syringe Experiment
We thought the best way to start would be to fail quickly.
We grabbed some syringes—standard syringes, the type you might use to give your pet medicine. If we could fill the syringe with delicious ingredients and create a device that could control the plunge rate, could we control the rate at which ingredients were extruded?
We might be able to 3D print food.
Over a couple of days, we prototyped a food 3D printer: A cutting board as the build platform. A system to position the print head above the plate wherever we needed it. Syringe plunger controls.
It was crude. It was makeshift. It was ready to test.
FOOD
We were living in Philadelphia at the time. There's a wonderful
sculpture downtown called the LOVE sculpture by Robert Indiana—a
major attraction. It's just the letters L,O stacked above V,E.
Inspiration: Robert Indiana's iconic LOVE sculpture
We thought: If we're 3D printing food, what if we started with a
food sculpture?
F & O stacked above O & D.
We loaded the 3D printer with chocolate frosting, fully assuming the
first test would fail. That nothing would work. That the printer
would make angry noises, maybe dump all the frosting at once.
To our amazement, the first print started!
We saw the outline of the F, and then it started to fill in. We saw
the outline of the O... We were so excited. We held our breath. We
could not believe this first prototype was working.
We had put food in a printer we had invented, and it was printing
the design we had sent to it. It was whizzing back and forth,
depositing chocolate frosting in our food sculpture.
Adrenaline racing.
The printer finally stopped. We looked down.
It looked like shit.
The first attempt: not appetizing. The F had lost its fidelity. The O had gotten smeared.
The result was not appetizing. The F had lost its fidelity. The O
had gotten smeared. It was a brown mess.
But we were not discouraged. In fact, we high-fived and said "Let's
go!"
This was the moment where we had to ask ourselves: What went wrong?
Maybe the room was too warm? Maybe the ingredient wasn't the right one for printing and for holding shape? What other ingredients could we try?
Back to the Drawing Board
We went back to our list... Pie dough. Pie dough is
a paste and holds its structure.
We mixed up a batch, loaded it into the printer, and used the same
swirling geometry we'd made for our Scoria Stools. We started
printing.
It was wonderful. It held its shape. It kept all the swirls and
spirals of our design.
We were so excited. We printed about 20 of them on the same tray and
carefully placed it in the oven.
Five minutes later, we walked over to the oven door and opened it.
Goopy mess.
All the butter had melted out.
THE REALIZATION
Of course. That's why pie tins exist.
But wait—this was progress! The pie printed beautifully, extruded
beautifully. It just didn't hold vertical shape as it baked.
What if, instead of printing vertically, we printed horizontally?
Vertical printing: butter melted out, structure collapsed
Horizontal printing: structure held, golden and beautiful
We quickly designed a geometric shape that was horizontal, put the
pie dough back in the printer, and printed this horizontal fractal
shape.
Again into the oven. Five minutes later, we were expecting the
butter to completely melt out.
It didn't.
It held its shape. Beautiful, buttery, brown printed pie crust
pieces. Chef Steph assembled them into a lemon meringue pie.
Lemon meringue pie assembled with 3D printed horizontal fractal pie crust
We thought to ourselves: If horizontal printing worked this
beautifully, what other ingredients could we test?
French Macarons Reimagined
French macarons—those really delicate, beautiful cookie sandwiches. We'd only ever seen them round. What if they could be a different shape? Shareable? Totally different?
We designed a geometric fractal shape, loaded up the printer with blueberry macaron batter, and printed.
They turned out awesome.
We even took them to an event. Funny enough, when folks saw the 3D printed desserts in bright blue, red, and white, they thought they were made from plastic. Decorative. Not realizing these amazing desserts could actually be eaten.
No one had ever had a French macaron that looked like this.
Moving Like a Pastry Chef
We started thinking about the pastry chef and the printer as
partners.
Printers move so linearly—back and forth, layer after layer. But
pastry chefs don't move like that. Pastry chefs move like
ballerinas, creating expressive designs with their piping bags and
tools. Up and down, side to side, with rhythm and gesture.
How could the machine behave more like a pastry chef?
We wrote new behavior for the machine. Instead of building up in
linear layers, the new behavior produced a dollop and plop motion—creating lots of little Hershey Kiss-shaped geometries on the
build plate.
We thought: What's a design we could make out of these little Kiss
shapes that would be hard for a human but easy for a robot?
The Fibonacci sequence.
That beautiful sequence of numbers and patterns that runs throughout
the universe—in your fingertips, in the spiral of shells, in the
face of sunflowers.
Nature's blueprint: Fibonacci spiral in the face of sunflowers
Robot precision: dolloped Kiss shapes forming the Fibonacci sequence
Culinary elevation: Chef Steph's avant-garde strawberry shortcake
It printed beautifully. Chef Steph elevated it into an avant-garde
strawberry shortcake.
Desserts as answers, not designs.
What Food Taught Us
Any of these desserts look worthy of the most extreme Instagram
foodie posts.
But Chef Steph didn't spend lots of time dreaming up what these
desserts would look like. The way these desserts look is an answer.
It's the answer to curiosity. The answer to questions we asked
together:
What ingredients can be extruded?
Pastes. Frosting, pie dough, macaron batter.
What shapes hold structure when baked?
Horizontal, not vertical. Pie tins exist for a reason.
How can a machine move more like a chef?
Dollop and plop. Rhythmic gesture instead of linear layers.
What can a robot do that's hard for a human?
Perfect Fibonacci sequences. Mathematical precision with
culinary beauty.
These beautiful desserts emerged from asking questions and following
where the experiments led.
Not predetermined designs. Discovered forms.
FORM FOLLOWS CURIOSITY
The most beautiful results come from letting the process teach you, not forcing your vision onto it.
The Results
From chocolate frosting experiments to avant-garde plated desserts,
each attempt taught us something new.
The beginning: 'It looked like shit' but taught us everything
The vertical pie failure that led to horizontal breakthrough
Beautiful, buttery, horizontal printed pie dough
Chef Steph's lemon meringue pie assembled with printed fractal crust
French macarons reimagined—geometric, shareable, unexpected
Dollop motion creating Fibonacci precision
The culmination: avant-garde strawberry shortcake that could only exist through collaboration
What We Learned About Making
We started with a question: What if you could 3D print food?
We learned:
Fail fast is a real strategy
Syringes and a cutting board got us to the first test in days.
That "looked like shit" moment was progress, not failure.
Constraints reveal opportunities
Butter melts? Print horizontally instead. Can't replicate a
chef's gesture? Teach the machine a new gesture. Macarons are
always round? Make them geometric.
Medium teaches process
Food behaves differently than plastic. Temperature matters.
Moisture matters. Structure emerges differently. The material
has its own logic.
Collaboration multiplies creativity
Steph's culinary expertise + Isaac's fabrication knowledge + the
machine's capabilities = desserts none of us could have imagined
alone.
Form follows curiosity
These desserts don't look the way they do because we designed
them that way. They look the way they do because we asked
questions and followed the answers.
The most beautiful results come from letting the process teach you.
Now that we can print food, what else can we print that behaves
unlike plastic?
From syringes to Fibonacci spirals
7
Unique Dessert Forms Created
4
Ingredient Types Tested
2
Days to First Prototype
1
Michelin-Trained Chef
∞
Questions Asked
| Title | 3D Printed Food Experiments |
|---|---|
| Year | 2015 |
| Location | Philadelphia, PA |
| Category | Culinary Innovation, Digital Fabrication |
| Collaboration | Chef Stephanie Budmen + Isaac Budmen |
| Technology | Modified FDM 3D printer with syringe-based paste extrusion |
| Ingredients Tested | Chocolate frosting, pie dough, macaron batter, various pastes |
| Notable Creations | FOOD sculpture, fractal pie crust, geometric macarons, Fibonacci strawberry shortcake |
| Key Innovation | Dollop motion behavior—teaching printer to move like a pastry chef |
| Philosophy | Desserts as answers to curiosity, not predetermined designs |
| Status | Ongoing exploration of food as fabrication medium |
Now that we can print food, what else can we print that behaves unlike plastic?
Curious About Cross-Disciplinary Collaboration?
This project proved what's possible when expertise meets
experimentation. Let's explore what happens when your questions meet
our fabrication capabilities.