Welcome to How To Cook That I'm Ann Reardon and I’ve always loved miniatures so today
we are making a mini patisserie.
We’ve got mini cupcakes, wrapped treats, brownies with sprinkles on top, macarons,
tarts and a couple of larger cakes on their stands.
And I’ll even show you how to make the a hutch and a counter to display them on.
To start with for the cupcakes you’ll need mini cases.
To make them just flatten out normal cupcake cases and then cut out a smaller circle.
Push it around a lid that is about the right size to help you shape it and then to bake
them I am using metal lids just make sure if they've got any plastic inside them that
you remove that first.
For the cake batter you'll need eggs, vanilla, milk, butter, cocoa powder, glucose syrup
or corn syrup, sugar, flour and baking powder.
And I'll put all the recipe quantities on the howtocookthat.net website in gram and
ounces and cups for you.
Add the butter and the milk to the cocoa powder and melt that in the microwave.
Then whip together your eggs and sugar until they are thick that will take a few minutes.
Then add in some of that mixture intto the cocoa mixture just to thin it to make it easier
to combine them together.
Fold the cocoa mixture through the eggs until it is fairly well combined.
Then sift the flour and baking powder on the top.
Sifting it just adds extra air into the mixture.
And then fold that through too making sure you can't see any more flour.
Then use a plastic bag with just a tiny bit of the corner cut off pipe some of that mixture
into each of your cupcake cases.
Now if you don’t have the patience to make your own mini patisserie you can check out
the World Chef game to make a virtual one instead.
They have sponsored this quick commercial.
And in the World Chef game you design your own restaurant, then inside there are chefs
from all around the world, you make the food and you serve the customers
and design your own restaurant.
And, yes, there is even a baker, my favourite one!
I’ve been spending hours playing this game and that’s what inspired me to make this
mini patisserie.
Now we need to bake our cupcakes in the oven for just a few minutes because they're so
tiny and they'll be done.
Pour the remaining batter into a small brownie tin lined with non-stick baking paper and
spread it out.
And you want to bake that until it is just done.
Allow it to cool and then cut out circles, these are for the larger cakes.
Then cut a thin strip for brownies and they're even too big so I'm going to cut it in half
this way as well so that they're thinner.
For the frosting, mix together some icing or powdered sugar with some butter.
Mix that really well together until it's smooth.
Place that into a piping bag fitted with a small star tip and pipe that onto of half
of your cupcakes.
Pipe a circle of frosting onto the centre of the big cakes, they are not really that
big but you know what I mean, they're bigger than the cupcakes.
Cover the outside of one of them in frosting and then roll it in some coloured sugar, I've
got the silvery coloured sugar here.
Then place that onto a cake stand and I'll show you how to make those later.
And pipe little stars around the base and around the top of the cake.
And then add a sugar pearl on top for a cherry.
Take the remaining frosting and mix in some cocoa powder to make it chocolate frosting
and pipe that on the other mini cupcakes.
Spread some chocolate frosting along the strip for the chocolate brownie.
Then flip it over and press it into the sprinkles.
Then slice those into even pieces.
Add them carefully to your cake stand, they're so cute, and put the dome on top.
Heat up some of the frosting and pour it over the other of the large cakes to give it a
nice even coating.
Putting it on top of something like this means it won't all pool at the bottom of the cake.
And then you can just neaten off the base using a knife.
Use a peeler to shave curls of white chocolate.
And then add them to the top of the cake, I am just holding a circle cutter just above
the cake to try and guide them all on the top of the cake so it doesn't fall down the
sides.
For the mini tarts you need butter, flour and a little sugar.
Rub the butter and the flour together until it looks like this, a bit like crumbs.
Then mix through the sugar.
Add a tiny bit of water at a time until it starts to come together and form a ball.
Roll that out and just use some extra flour on your rolling pin so that it doesn't stick.
And then cut out circles of pastry.
Add them to a greased mini muffin tin.
And bake them until they are golden and they should come out of the tin easily like this.
And what you like to the inside of your tarts.
I am going to add some warm jam for some fruit tarts, some lemon curd to one and some melted
chocolate for a chocolate one.
And then add them into your cabinet next to your little bags of candy and these bags are
really just bags of sprinkles.
To make mini macarons just follow my macaron recipe, I have several videos on how to make
macarons already and I'll link you to the playlist for those below.
Pipe some tiny little ones and then bake them as normal.
Pair the lids with similar sized bases and fill each of them with ganache, each one just
uses the tiniest amount.
Add the lids into place.
And then put those on a mini tray, and I just made this tray out of thin metal like the
metal you'd find on a drink can.
And add the tray into the cabinet.
For our blocks of chocolate, spread out some tempered chocolate or you could use compound
chocolate to the thickness that you want your blocks to be.
Then allow that to set.
And then cut it into evenly sized pieces.
Wrap each block in foil, neatly folding over each end just like it's a real block of chocolate.
Then print out a label there on the template and use some glue to put it into place around
the block.
Using some scraps of balsa wood make a little tray and add the chocolate into place on the
shelf.
For the furniture, dolls house furniture is really expensive here so I decided to design
and show you how to make it instead.
To make the furniture I am using balsa wood which is really light and easy to cut.
Place the template over the top and cut around it using a Stanley knife.
You can get the template on the howtocookthat.net website.
And if you want to use thicker wood you of course can but then you'd need to use a jig-saw
to cut it so it will be a bit harder.
Once you've cut out all the pieces for the counter use the hot glue gun to join the front
pretty part along the edge of the base.
Then flip that over and put it on two match boxes to hold it up to the right height.
And glue the two side pieces into place.
The good thing about hot glue is it dries so quickly.
In that front corner there add some more glue to reinforce it and do the same the whole
way along those joins, now this is under the cabinet so you're not going to see it.
Again using matchboxes to hold up the shelf and use glue to put it at each end and make
sure it's straight.
Run some glue across the top of each side and quickly put the top into place.
Then glue a strip across the top, this will help hold the clear plastic in place when
we add that later.
And do the same with another strip across the base there.
Taking the off cut from the scrolled part, cut the edge off it to make a piece to decorate
the top of the cabinet.
But don't glue that into place just yet.
Use some sand paper to round off the corners on the top so it looks all nice.
Now to make it look pretty, take some white paint and cover the whole thing including
that loose piece and leave that to dry.
Once it is all dried you can add glue around the front and put a piece of acetate or thin
plastic across the front of the display cabinet.
And then glue that loose decorative strip across the front to make it all look neat.
For the hutch, you want to follow the same steps.
Cut out all the pieces and paint them and we are also for this one a box.
So paint the box and we're using some matchboxes, for those just paint around the front edge
because that's all you're going to see.
And then I am painting some of this hutch white and some in a pale teal, you can use
pink or whatever you like to give it a bit of contrast there.
Glue it all together.
And then add a bead for the handle on each of the matchboxes and this will make them
like little drawers that we can open and close.
And then just put those into place.
For the top of the hutch, put some glue on the top of the box and then add the balsa
wood.
I've cut mine out of two strips because the balsa wood wasn't quite wide enough to cut
it out of one.
Add some teal balsa wood to the back of the lid of the box and then put the shelf into
place just using some glue.
Put some glue along the top edge and add that ornate piece across the top and then put another
one across the shelf and that just really finishes it off.
Glue that whole thing into place on top of your base.
Now for the cake stands I just used a doll's plate upside down and hot glued it to a toothpick
with beads on it and used a coin for the base.
And this one is just part of a cake push pop stuck onto a coin and you could of course
paint these bases too if you wanted.
And this one is very similar and I am using the lid of the push pop as the dome cover
for it.
The other mini bags and books I found online I'll link you to where you can print those
out from the blog post.
And then all you need to do is invite a friend over to enjoy it.
A cake!
Don't forget to download the World Chef game, you can get it free from the app store or
on Google Play and I'll link to both of those below and once you've got it you can connect
it to Facebook to play with friends.
Subscribe to howtocookthat for more cakes, chocolates and desserts; click here to see
last week’s video, here for the recipe and here for my YouTube channel.
Make it a great week and I’ll see you on Friday!