National Chocolate Cupcake Day is observed annually on October 18. With a dollop of frosting, one sweet serving will satisfy chocolate and dessert lovers!
Cupcakes have also been known to be called:
- Fairy Cakes
- Patty Cakes
- Cup Cakes (different from Cupcakes (one-word)
Cupcakes can be traced back to 1796 when there was a recipe notation of “a cake to be baked in small cups” written in American Cookery, by Amelia Simmons. The earliest known documentation of the term cupcake was in 1828 in Seventy-five Receipts for Pastry, Cakes, and Sweetmeats in Eliza Leslie’s Receipts cookbook.
Cupcakes were originally baked in heavy pottery cups. Today, some bakers still use individual ramekins, small coffee mugs, large teacups, or other small ovenproof pottery-type dishes for baking their cupcakes.
- Cupcake liners do more than make it easy to remove them from the pan. Traditionally, sides of tins are greased for easy removal, but also floured because the batter needs to have something to cling to. A cupcake liner takes care of both.
- The largest cupcake weighs 2,594 lb and was achieved by Georgetown Cupcake on November 2, 2011. The oven and pan were custom made for this attempt and the pan was unassembled easily in order to prove that the cupcake was fully cooked and free standing with no support structures in place. The cupcake was 56 inches in diameter and 36 inches tall. The pan itself weighed 674.39 pounds.
- One of the most popular cupcake bakery’s in the U.S. is Crumbs in New York City. They have reported $23.5 million in cupcake revenue last year alone!
- Cupcakes were actually originally called “Number Cakes” or “1234 Cakes” because it was an easy way to remember portions…One cup of butter, two cups of sugar, three cups of flour, four eggs, one cup of milk, and one spoonful of soda.
- Original cupcake recipes were not frosted, and usually were usually just flavored with spices or dried fruit.
- Cupcakes gained popularity in 1919 when Hostess began mass producing them. But they weren’t the cream filled, frosted kind we all know until the 1950’s.
- Cupcakes started gaining popularity in the early 2000’s when NYC shops like Magnolia Bakery were featured on Sex and the City.
- The first “cupcake only” bakery is Sprinkles Cupcakes, opened in 2005. They make over 25,000 cupcakes a day from 11 locations.
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