Sweet & Frosted Cupcakes


Who doesn’t know what a cupcake is? Probably everyone who’s ever had a birthday knows what a cupcake is, so what am I going on about putting an ar- ticle in the magazine about Cupcakes? Well again the history of what they are and where they came from fascinates me and makes me fall in love with them all over again.


Cupcakes are little single serving cakes baked in little paper or aluminium cups and decorated with sprinkles and frost- ing and icing. Cupcakes are called fairy cakes in England and patty cakes in Aus- tralia.


Cupcakes make their first appearance in the 1700s when a recipe was written by Amelia Simms called for the “cakes to be baked in small cups”. In 1828 the term “cupcake” was used in a cookbook by Eliza Leslie; that makes our little in- nocent cupcakes 183 years old!


Before muffin trays were widely avail- able, cupcakes were often baked in individual pottery cups, ramekins or molds.


Another kind of “cup cake” referred to cakes that were made with ingredients measured with a standard size cup in- stead of weighing them as well as bak- ing the cakes in the same cups.


These little cakes were also baked in tins and were later called 1234 cakes or quar- ter cakes because they were made up of four ingredients (one cup of butter, two cups of sugar, three cups of flour, and four eggs.)


Now lets see some variations on the cup- cake theme: “cake in a mug”. I thought these are wonderful gift ideas. Cake-in- a-Mug gained huge popularity via the in- ternet as a great gift idea that could be ordered online and sent via mail to recip- ients and clearly makes a great gift idea even here on the South Coast because of its simplicity & novelty. The ingredients are all in a microwave safe mug, requires limited wet ingredients to be mixed with the mug ingredients and cooked in 5 min or less in a microwave! Great idea for kids and adults alike don’t you think?


Then there are the traditional butterfly cakes. Heard of those? Lovely little cakes sometimes called fairy cakes because of the little “wings” on the top of the cake that are supposed to be the fairy’s wings. Butterfly cakes are any flavor cupcakes with the tops cut off and cut in half to form two half circles which are then po- sitioned on the top of the base cake sing butter cream, whipped cream or jam to keep them in place and then decorated. Voila: Butterfly Cakes!


A triumph in creativity, cupcakes can be the most beautiful expression in pastry.


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