Photo Cakes

Photo cakes are becoming increasingly popular nowadays. While many of us never knew about this technology, it's provided by many cake shops from Monginis, Brownie Point to The Chocolate Room.

Source: yummycakesindia.com

How is photo cake made?

1 would wonder how is the edible photograph actually put on the cake. Well, this is actually because of 2 food materials – edible icing paper and food coloring products. The scanned image is printed on the icing paper which is made from rice/potato/cornstarch and the food coloring is used as ink to print the picture on the cake.

How to order a photo cake?

A picture cake has to be ordered at most 3 days prior to the day you want the cake to be ready. Some of them allow 2 days and some even 1 day. But cake shops do not usually agree for 1 day time. So if you are planning for a photo cake, well, plan in much advance.

The photograph to be printed on the cake has to be given as a soft copy - by email/pen drive etc. Better the quality of the picture, better would be the print on the cake. Hence make sure the photograph you are giving to the cake shop is of the best quality.

Different cake shops offer different flavors for photocakes. It could be blackforest, dutch chocolate cake, pineapple cake etc. Also some of the shops provide choice for the shape of the cake – rectangular, round, heart shape etc.

Cost for photocakes usually range between Rs. 700 and Rs. 1500 for 1 Kg. Photo cakes weight starts from 1Kg.

Some personal experience:

I had to order 2 photo cakes in the last month for celebrating 2 wedding occasions in the family.

1^st one was from The Chocolate Room, Kandivali, Mumbai. We needed the cake on the next day of ordering, so we were quite worried about which cake shop would do that customization for us within 1 day. After contacting multiple cake shops, The Chocolate Room agreed to deliver the cake in 1 day. We emailed them the picture and visited the store to choose the cake flavor and shape. The Chocolate Room offered heart shape and rectangular shaped photocakes in flavors of Blackforest and Chocolate. After discussions and suggestions from the seller, we settled on a 1.5Kg heart shaped blackforest cake. It costed us Rs. 1800 - much more than what other cake shops charged. We were advised that the picture be framed with white icing for greater impact of the photograph. With big holes in our pockets we walked out of the store. On the next day, we got the cake at the time decided.

On the 2^nd occasion, we ordered a photo cake from Monginis, Mulund, Mumbai. This time we called the cake shop 3 days prior to the occasion day. As it was not possible for us to visit the store, the flavor, shape, weight selection etc was done on the phone. Monginis offers photo cakes in only rectangular shape and flavors of dutch chocolate and Swiss chocolate. And charged Rs. 800 for 1 Kg cake. So we ordered a 1 Kg rectangular shaped Swiss Chocolate cake. Payment was done through online bank transfer. And I collected the cake from the shop on the day of the occasion.