*** Welcome to piglix ***

Miniature food


Miniature food is a kind of replica of food in a much-smaller-than-usual size. Decades before, miniature food was created like other miniature arts. In 2014, a Youtube Channel, Miniature Space, started producing videos that showcased the makings of a variety of miniature meals and dishes prepared with tiny utensils. It established a fanatical trend of miniature food in Japan, then onward toward becoming a worldwide trend. Nowadays, miniature food does not just appear as toys or accessories, but edible food as well. The process of producing the edible miniature food can be recognized as an entertainment to the creators.

Food models first appeared in Japan in 1917. Businesses that produced and sold these food models was set up by Iwasaki Ryuzo in 1932. In the old days, models of food were made from wax. Nowadays, they are mostly made from plastic. As the size of the sample food models showcased by the restaurants in the past were usually much larger than the actual served meals, which looks deceiving to customers. Therefore, businessmen started shrinking the size of the models. Generally delicate and tiny stuffs are called “kawaii” in Japanese, miniature food are produced with the technique of making miniature arts in Japan in the recent decades. A trend of making miniature food was brought up by a Youtubers called Miniature Space and AAAjoken. They decided to cook the tiny items with edible ingredients. More and more videos of the makings of miniature food are uploaded on Youtube thereupon. People started paying attention to the tiny creations. In 2015, a report from a video intelligence firm Tubular Labs indicated that these miniature food videos contributed up to 3% of the total views in the food category.

Miniature food can be either edible or inedible. For the edible part, materials need to be prepared for cooking processes. Real ingredients are required for cooking and food will be cooked by different miniature utensils just like tiny wok, tiny pan and long, tiny and sharp knife. Up to now, there were many successful attempts on creating different kinds of food using miniature utensils, such as strawberry cake, pancakes, and cheeseburgers. The edible miniature foods are cooked by miniature utensils which functioned as the real one, only in a much smaller size. However, regarding the appearance of the miniature food, in order to make it more realistic, sometimes the ingredients will vary from the original recipes. The food may not be cooked by any ceramic cooker.


...
Wikipedia

...