Making Mini Food Book Review and Giveaway

Hey everyone, since I've got this great big dollhouse to play in I'm inviting you all over into my new kitchen! We're celebrating the release of Making Mini Food with pizza, a mini pizza! The best kind!  Ready to make some miniature food?

I started off 2018 with a culinary trip into the world of miniature food making. A couple weeks of weeks ago GMC publications sent me a copy of Making Mini Food by Lynn Allingham to share with you all and I spent some time making and baking through it.

(Making Mini Food by Lynn Allingham, published by GMC (Available on Amazon))

If you haven't heard of Lynn Allingham, she's the owner and creator of Etsy shop Tuckshop where she makes and sells food-inspired jewellery.  Based in the UK, her creations are little yummy wearables of art!  This book felt like her pulling back the curtain and giving us a glimpse into her process and special crafting secrets.

The book leads with a couple of pages on tools and materials, jewellery making tips, and clay techniques like texturing, cutting and making canes.  The photographic reference made it super easy when searching the local craft store for supplies.   The 30 'recipes' are divided into beginner, intermediate, and advanced.  I thought there was a good variety in each section with a couple of real standouts in each. We're talking everything from loaded bagels, mac'n cheese, and fully decked out roast dinners.  There was also a list of suppliers towards the end (mostly UK based, some Etsy), which was helpful for items I couldn't find locally.

The recipes themselves are nicely laid out with a materials list and detailed instructions with colour photos for each and every step.  I found the format very easy to follow along with.  Most recipes only required a few basic colours of clay and paints, keeping it a bit more budget-friendly, and the majority of tools were things that I already owned or were part of a basic clay making stash.  That said if you own nothing relating to clay crafting be prepared to buy some essentials like a rolling pin, soft chalk pastels, and liquid clay.  Having some miniature plates/basket helps too.  (My own tip: I personally find a clay pasta style roller is the easiest and best way to mix hard clay, a really worthwhile investment!)

So what did I make?  Pizza! Pastries! Mugs of glorious cocoa!

The pizza is a mushroom, pepper and sweet corn pizza.  I've personally never had sweet corn on my pizza (is that a UK thing?) but it looked really cute with the other toppings.  And I decided to add some green pepper to the recipe since it followed the same technique as the red pepper.

Making the mushroom cane was a little more difficult since it wasn't all round (this was an advanced recipe after all!) but I felt like I kind of got the hang of it on a second go.  The great thing about this book is that the more recipes you make the better you get at eyeing the right shapes and sizes.

This book also explains how to make accessories for your food.  Below is the pizza paddle I made from balsa wood.

I used Fimo soft clay and baked for about 20 minutes in my real oven.  Be sure to check your clay package to know how long and at what temp to bake.  I baked mine on tin foil.

Next up were the pastries and cocoa mugs. (I think they are meant to be cappuccino but I made mine cocoa).  Ohhh this was a fun one.  This was actually a bunch of mini recipes into one.  I loved learning how to make the mini cherries since they have this kind of translucent finish.  And the pecans look perfect on the braided pastries.

I found this recipe a bit easier to make after doing the pizza and I really like the way they turned out.

I wasn't able to get Deco Gel in time for the review since it is not available at a local craft store. Instead, I used a gloss mod-podge and paint combo to make a glazey finish.  This book does use Deco Gel in a lot of the recipes for sauces, syrups and glazes.  My mod-podge/paint hack was kind of limited so I would suggest investing in a couple of the colours from an online shop if you don't already own some to really make the most of the book.  They aren't very expensive but most ship from Asia which can mean a bit of a postal wait depending on where you live.

Overall I think this book is a fantastic gateway to miniature food making.  From someone who finds most clay projects intimidating it was very encouraging to see things come together so easily.  I do have some prior clay experience but I would describe myself as beginner-intermediate.  Reading and baking with this book has motivated me to try doing more clay projects to grow my collection.

Making Mini Food is definitely made with the beginner maker in mind, so if you're just starting out with clay or want to better your new clay making techniques I would take a look!  Even the advanced recipes are approachable for someone with limited experience.  I think it will give you the skills and confidence to make some really yummy looking mini food.   No better way to fill your dollhouse kitchen!

To get a copy for yourself, Making Mini Food is on sale on Amazon (#1 in new release in Polymer Clay!) in both Kindle and Paperback format.

And now for the giveaway!  Interested in learning more about making mini food? Leave a comment on this post describing a food you'd like to see in miniature to be entered for the giveaway.  I'll also be running this contest on my Instagram account (@paperdollminiatures)  and you can receive an extra entry by leaving a comment there too.  It's open internationally!  I'll be selecting one entry on Febuary 9th, 2018 and sending the winner a copy!


A big thanks to GMC publications for giving me the advance copy to check out and to give to my readers!  All opinions are my own.