A long time friend of mine ordered a Sweet 16th birthday cake for her neice. She didnt want anything fancy, just a large sheet cake with a some sort of dolphin on it. So I realized about a year ago that my Epson Workforce 500 printer will work with icing sheets. So I found a really nice picture of a dolphin with a sunset scene on Microsoft clipart. Well I had the cake all ready and when I tried to print out the picture a teeny-tiny piece of the icing sheet broke off somewhere down in the printer. My printer recognized it as a paper jam and wouldnt do ANYTHING until the jam was cleared. Me and my husband took the whole printer apart and couldnt get the jam error message to go away. I ended up cutting out a dolphin from fondant and painting it up with some petal dust and putting that on the cake. Nothing even close to my vision for this cake and I was so disappointed, not at all what I would do for a girls Sweet 16. Never-the-less they said the cake was a hit and it was all eaten up. I have heard it said so many times never try something new on someone elses cake and boy did I learn my lesson. I was so upset I forgot to take a picture of the cake before she picked it up.

Usually printers are purchased just for using with edible inks....you can't use a printer that has ever had regular ink in it for edible images...

Sorry you had a bad experience though!!!!!!

Well I saw a printer that I believe is made just for cakwork. If Im not mistaken I saw it on Sugarcraft's website and it came with the ink cartridges and some of the icing sheets. I think I will invest in that one and i just hate that I just spent about $80 on those color ink cartridges for my Epson printer ! GRRRR, money is too tight to be wasting but I guess it's live and learn in the cakeworld! lol Thanks for the advice.

While some normal printers can be used as edible ink printers, you don't want to use the same printer for edible ink and regular ink. The regular ink residue is all over the inside of your printer, so it could end up on the cake. I'm sorry you had a crummy experience. Printers can be the worst! I'm glad everyone liked the cake!

This happened to me this weekend. Luckily, I turned the power off and back on and while warming up, it spat the rest of the "paper" out. Which is a good thing, because I couldn't see it anywhere!

Sorry for the frustration!

I also will advise you to stay away from the epsons. They are very finicky and are much harder to maintain. Also, you only want to consider purchasing a system for that if you are going to be able to print on average at least once per week.

Your printer probably broke because you need to use edible inks, not regular ink on the icing sheets.

Also, when you buy a new printer, use it only with the edible inks and the edible sheets, or you could get someone sick.

So now you have to buy two printers: one for your cake work, and another one for your regular printing.

I'm sorry that happened! I hate when my plan doesn't work out! I'm glad they loved it!