What Would You Print on Your Dessert? Cornell University Launches the 3-D Food Printer

food printer cornell university

The Food Printer from Cornell in Action

We watched in awe as Star Trek magically materialized food through the use of its replicators and protein resequencers. While that sort of technology may still be light years away, engineers at Cornell University have geared up to launch the next generation in foodie technology-the 3-D food printer.

The 3-D food printer uses pastes rather than ink to create designs using precision well beyond what’s possible using the naked eye and the human hand. And while the thought of a mushy turkey paste sitting on the table come Thanksgiving doesn’t necessarily fill our hearts with joy, adding chocolate, white chocolate and a little bit of frosting to these machines creates culinary possibilities guaranteed to make your taste buds dance with joy.

Or salivate like Pavlov’s dog. Whatever.

Check it out!

Food Printer from Cornell on YouTube

The really cool thing is that right now, this is an open source project. That means that all of you out there rubbing your hands together and trying to figure out how to get your hands on one before your mother-in-law comes to visit next Christmas will soon be able to go online, download the blueprints and build one yourself.

If you don’t want to put your gadgetry skills to the test (or if, like me, you just plain don’t have any) the printer is expected to retail commercially for about $1,000 when launch day comes around. Whenever that day may be…