A Brief History Of The Humble Cupcake
Where The Idea of Baking Cake Into A Cup Comes From
Sep 23, 2009
The popularity of the little cupcake has exploded in the past couple of years. There have been a plethora of cupcake cook books, cupcake shops are springing up all across the nation, and the internet is busting at the seems with all things cupcakes. It’s been a cupcake revolution. Even in the plummeting economy, people can’t seem to get their fill of cupcakes. Cupcake shops have had record sales and cupcake making supplies are flying off the store shelves. Many leading economic indicators are indicating that cupcakes are well, recession proof. I’m putting all my money in the delicious little treat!
So what exactly is a cupcake? Where does it come from and how long has it been around? Cupcakes started showing up in cookbooks around the 1790s and early 1800s. A cupcake is generally considered by most to be a small single serving cake baked in a thin paper cup and top with generous amounts of icing, sprinkles, and any of the many other wonderful treats normally piled onto its regular sized cousin the sheet cakes and layer cakes.
Would a cupcake by any other name taste just as sweet? It would if it were called a fairy cake. For those of us in the US, Canada, South Africa, and Australia the cute little cakes are called cupcakes most commonly because before the invention of muffin tins, they were baked in little ramekins and tea cups. In Great Britain however they are known as fairy cakes because they are the perfect size for a group of fairies to pleasantly enjoy. How lovely.
Cupcakes also got their name from the numeric measuring system that gained popularity of the old weight measuring system sometime at the beginning of the 19th century. Like the pound cake before it, the cupcake was so called because most of the measurements were by volume using the standard cup size. This cake was also known as the 1234 cake or the numeric cake because the ingredients were usually something like; One cup of butter, two cups of sugar, three cups of flour, four eggs, one cup of milk, and one spoonful of soda. Cooking in a hearth oven wasn’t exactly a science and baking a cake in one took quite a long time and would often come out burned on the outside. Many people started to bake their cake batter into small cups as it was faster and usually didn’t burn on the outside before cooking on the inside.
The first known recipe using the term ‘cupcake’ was in 1826 found in an American cookbook. The ‘cup’ in this recipe referred to the new fangled volume measuring system of measuring by the cup and not the weight. Recipes that called for baking cake into a small cups date back as far as 1796 and are usually called Queen Cakes.
The muffin pan wasn’t invented until the turn of the 20th century which increased the popularity of the cupcake enough for Hostess to create its own version and in 1919 they introduced their famous snack cupcake. The sales of the Hostess snack cupcake lagged during World War II mostly due to the sugar and chocolate rationing that took place during this time. D.R. Rice of Hostess decided that it was time to redesign the little cakes. He injected the cupcakes with sugary sweet cream and added the now iconic squiggle of white icing atop a thin chocolate layer. D.R. Rice also created such wonders as the HoHo, Twinkie, Snowballs, and that most amazing of pre packed treats, the Ding Dong.
Sure cupcakes have become trendy since appearing on Sex and the City and popping up on hip blogs and in fancy city bakeries but cupcakes have been awesome for nearly 200 years. They have an amazing nostalgic quality that can turn even a burly lumberjack into a bright eyed child squealing with delight. Cupcakes are portable, easy to make, versatile dessert miracles. Everyone can choose their favorite chocolate or vanilla, even those who dare to dream of red velvet. Best of all they offer the perfect high icing to cake ratio.
 |
