I am working on a theme customization where I am displaying shopping minicart in header nav. I am using a custom theme, a non-RWD child. In catalog/navigation/top.phtml file; I am outputting the minicart in one of the <li> element in header navigation, and it is outputting it correctly.

The issue I am having now is, when I add any product to cart or remove it; it does not reflect in header minicart. I have to clear FPC cache in order for it to display correctly. The code to display minicart I copied from template file page/html/header.phtml. If I render the minicart in original template then it seems to work although in new place it does not work, it seems to get cached and not rendering correctly.

I am wondering if the original template had some type of hole-punching working around it which is broken now. Or am I missing some configuration in admin, layout files? I did not change anything in the layout files though.

I want the minicart part to not be cached, or at least refresh it whenever cart has any change in order to keep minicart up-to-date.

Please let me know if you know the solution for such a problem or have faced similar situation. I want a work around that does not involve installing or creating a custom module.

Thanks in advance,