3D-printed cake made from 7 different pastes and finished by a laser

A 3D-printing lab has figured out how to automate the assembly and cooking of a seven-ingredient cheesecake – and the result doesn’t taste like a conventional dessert.

“When you bite into it, you kind of feel the flavours hit you in different waves,” says Jonathan Blutinger at Columbia University in New York. “And I think that’s a function of the layering inside of the actual structure.”

Blutinger and his colleagues grabbed seven ingredients from local grocery stores: graham crackers, peanut butter, strawberry jam, Nutella, banana puree, cherry syrup and …