I once laser engraved a few hundred digits of pi onto an apple pie for Pi Day, using a 400W CO2 laser in the student machine shop at our research lab [0]. By us

I once laser engraved a few hundred digits of pi onto an apple pie for Pi Day, using a 400W CO2 laser in the student machine shop at our research lab [0]. By using higher power at faster scan speeds you can get depth rather than burning. I also once tried slicing slab bacon with it, with the goal of cooking it while cutting. I was pretty sure doing so would win the internet, but I aborted the attempt when it became clear the water content was too high and the grease would make a significant mess. There's a group in Japan that had done a number of experiments with laser cutters and food, including using computer vision recognition to identify and then only cook the fat in a slice of bacon [1]. [0] https://guavaduck.com/laser-pie/ https://guavaduck.com/laser-pie/ [1] https://fukuchilab.org/projects/laser-cooking https://fukuchilab.org/projects/laser-cooking