All About the Cricut

Kitchens and Chemistry says:

Let me start by saying that I’ve never used a Cricut product before, but I’ve been using gumpaste and fondant for about a year on my cakes. This is a fabulous machine. There is a learning curve, but it will work once you figure out the right consistency for your edible materials and with a bit of adjustment to the instructions. You really can cut the intricate designs, not just the basic hearts and whatnot. So don’t give up!

First, roll your gumpaste/fondant really thin. As in, you can see the lines on the mat through it. They say to freeze it to help avoid tearing–if you roll it thin, you can use it at room temp. I couldn’t get it to work at all frozen, because the condensation from the air on the cold gumpaste pretty much instantly turned it to goo. In general, I think that gumpaste works better than fondant.

Second, if you make your own gumpaste or fondant, you may want to add a bit more powder sugar than usual. Go for structure over flexibility.

Third, use a very very small amount of water (instead of shortening) on the mat. I wiped the mat down with a damp cloth and tried it with both gumpaste and fondant. Both worked much better this way than with shortening. The dampness from the cloth is enough to get the sugar to stick to the mat, and it doesn’t slide around as much as it does on shortening.

So all in all, are you going to be an instant designer cake decorator with this? No–you have to understand that you’re working with sugar, and sugar can be finicky, and there’s going to be some trial and error. But you don’t have to be a professional to get it to work, either. You just have to be patient.
Rating: 4 / 5

Anna Mueller says:

I’ve had this machine for about 3 weeks now and they make it look so easy. Put your fondant on the greased cutting board and place in the machine and cut. After 3 weeks of playing with it, there was only one cut that came out OK. The rest of them the blade tore through the design. Put it on the least tension and it doesn’t cut at all. The medium tension worked the best and the hard just destroyed whatever I had on the mat. They show all the intricate designs you can do and none came out for me, it tore them to pieces. There are different tensions and speeds and I tried to play with them all to no avail. I am returning my machine as this is a big disappointment. On the plus side if you can get it to work properly there are a lot of great designs you can use and all their Cricut cartridges can be used from the other Cricut machines.
Rating: 2 / 5