Don't call them cubes; The Sugar Lab's 3-D printed sugar sculptures are actually up to 10 inches high – way more than you want in your coffee – and they exemplify some of the challenges and opportunities designers will face as 3-D printed food becomes more prevalsent.

Liz and Kyle von Hasslen started Sugar Lab last fall to build these confectionery creations, modeled in 3-D and printed via an extruder. Both architecture students, the von Hasslens printed their first sugar for a friend's birthday last fall.

"We really wanted to make her a cake, and we realized at the last minute we didn't have an oven in our apartment," says Liz (though they did have a 3-D printer). "We were able to print her a tiny little cupcake topper ... and she was so excited about it that we started thinking maybe other people would be really excited about the concept."

Sugar was a natural place to begin experimenting with 3-D printed food, says Kyle. When it gets wet, sugar gets sticky, and Sugar Lab's mechanism lays down selectively dampened sugar, layer by fine layer, to build otherwise impossible structures.

At its heart, printing sugar is a design problem, he says, with architectural undertones. Supporting a structure made of sugar is different from one made of plastic (or metal) and the shape of the sculptures reflects that: "There's constraints, basically, and those constraints make interesting objects," Kyle says. "Because then you're obligated to think – and design really carefully – ways that a structure can be integrated into the surface of a pattern, for example. Or you're obligated to think about mathematically complex shapes that have surfaces that curve in multiple dimensions that really promote strength."

Some of the most obvious uses are apparent right away to chefs, Kyle says. Sugar Lab is working with a confectioner to create a cake, printing not just garnishes but frosting, and even the stand the cake will sit on.

But while sugar is just the start when it comes to 3-D printing food, Liz believes there's a lot of potential. "We kind of daydream about a day when there'll be a sugar 3-D printer in every custom bakery," she says. "A bride, for example, will be going in there and she'll not only be tasting the cake flavor and choosing the decoration of the cake, but also choosing the shape of the 3-D printed sugar topper." But more importantly, how will Morimoto use this thing when he's making a bizarro miso-glazed confection? We think it's only a matter of time until you see one of these things in Kitchen Stadium.

All photos: Courtesy of Sugar Lab