The Rise of Cupcakes...with Frosting!

Warning: This article does not involve any vegetables.

I come from a long line of professional bakers: my father was a cook/baker in the military, his grandfather owned a bakery in Kingston, Ontario, his father before him...we have icing sugar in our veins. And one favorite of the family was cake. Cake was the king of all deserts in my house, even the raisin pie my dad made was humbled before his chocolate cake. It didn't hurt my mom was awesome at baking too.

Cupcakes however, were never in their repertoire. They are in mine though as I love these mini cups of heaven. Over the last five years, there's been an explosion of cupcake specific bakeries across Canada. Now the first flush of love is dying down, many of these places are now offering assorted cookies and other pastries as well. But the passion of the cupcake got me thinking...who was the first to develop cakes and cupcakes specifically?

Thank You Miss Simmons!

Cup Cakes (called Fairy Cakes in England) were first mentioned in American Cookery by Amelia Simmons in 1796, the first cookbook written by an American. She was probably a domestic cook in a family and was an orphan. Simmons probably knew about cupcakes from English bakers who made the lighter and smaller version of the cup cake. She writes:

A light Cake to bake in small cups:
Half a pound sugar, half a pound butter, rubbed into two pounds flour,
one glass wine, one do rose water, two do. emptins, a nutmeg, cinnamon
and currants.

Lovely Fairy cakes - note the absence of a tower of icing. But the designs are modern.

Another type of cup cake was the number cake, or 1234 cake, or quarter cakes as the baker could remember how much of what ingredient would go in.  One such Victorian era cup cake recipe that would have been a number cake:

CUP CAKES.

Two cups of sugar, one cup of butter, one cup of milk, three cups and
a half of flour and four eggs, half a teaspoonful of soda, large spoon
cream of tartar; stir butter and sugar together and add the beaten
yolks of the eggs, then the milk, then flavoring and the whites. Put
cream of tartar in flour and add last. Bake in buttered gem-pans, or
drop the batter, a teaspoonful at a time, in rows on flat buttered
tins.

To this recipe may be added a cup of English currants or chopped
raisins; and also another variety of cake may be made by adding a half
cup citron sliced and floured, a half cupful of chopped almonds and
lemon extract.

"Hey...let's get nuts and make tiny cakes? What do you think guys...guys?" - English Bakers in Victorian era.

The 20th Century Rises

Further refinement to cup cakes came int he 20th century. As you can tell from the two recipes from above, icing wasn't used. Cupcakes were finally decorated with frosting in the 1920’s and only with chocolate or vanilla. Taking a cue from modern baking methods, the first commercially produced cupcakes were launched around 1918, originally produced by the Taggart Bakery - then bought by Hostess. Early in the 20th century, the advent of multi-cupcake molded tins brought modest mass production methods to cupcake making, and a modern baking tradition was born! (Thanks University of Florida for the info). During the 1940’s cupcakes were available with Malted icing. Then it got even easier to make your own: Cake mixes, sold by Duncan Hines and others, made it easier and more popular to bake cakes and cupcakes at home.

The overwhelming popularity of cup cakes came about in early 2000s with the first cupcake only bakeries in America. Before this, cup cakes were made by general bakeries or at home. Magnolia Bakery in New York gained fame with their cupcakes from the huge hit show Sex and the City. One of the first cupcake only bakery was Sprinkles Cupcakes in 2002 in Beverly Hills.

Here's an amazing infograph just on cupcakes for you to enjoy before you head to the baking bowls to make your own.

COOKIE! The History of Cookies

What's a cookie blog without the cookie monster doing it right?

My friend Anne, who is a serious food lover (she hates the term foodie), asked me to write more on her personal favourite desert item: the cookie. She loves the new edgy ones made with no gluten and chickpeas, but Anne also loves nothing more than baking up some perfect gingersnaps for her three kids, wife and anyone else who comes near them. So here you go, Anne, a little doughy history ready to be baked and served with ice cream.

A cookie is a thin, usually sweetened, small cake that is hand held, and can be either crisp or soft. The name cookie is from the Dutch word koekje, meaning small cake. Some historians believe that the first cookies were used as tests, and a small amount of cake batter was used to test over temperatures and the recipe. It can be baked or fried, and is seen in almost every country in the world.

The first record of what we'd call a cookie was in the Persian Empire (modern day Turkey and Iraq) around 600s CE, and made with honey. These cookies were usually only for the wealthy who could afford the flour and time to make these things. We can thank the Muslim invaders of Spain and the Crusaders heading to the holy land for giving Europe a taste of the good life. They brought the spices and recipes needed to improve some seriously boring cooking.

Many cookbooks of the 1400s detail how to make cookies, such as German springerles, or little jumpers, because these cookies rise while cooking. It's a anise-flavoured cookie first mentioned in 14th century, and usually is imprinted with designs or images of horses or biblical scenes with special rollers or molds.

The delicious taste of Christianity.

In Asia, cookies were usually less sweet but still loved. When sugar was first introduced to China from India in the 600s CE, the Chinese went nuts for it and created sesame see balls. It was a sweet dough rolled in seeds, expanded, then was filled with something yummy inside like red bean paste or crushed peanuts. 

Cookies fit for an Emperor...or a 21st century cookie fiend.

The Chinese almond cookie made of course with almonds is similar in appearance to Turkish cookies and also that they are usually dry, crisp and sweet. Another common cookies is the walnut cookie, first mentioned in the Ming Dynasty around 1500. It was considered a cookie only for the palace, but once word and the recipe got out, the common peasant made it with almonds, sesames, roasted melon seeds, cashews or other nuts.

My personal favourite is the chocolate chip cookie.  It has its humble beginnings during the American Great Depression. Ruth Wakefield of Whitman, Massachusetts ran the Toll House restaurant with her husband from 1930 to 1967. One day she messed up a chocolate cookie batch when she ran out of cocoa and put hunks of baker's chocolate into it thinking it would melt. It did not but it tasted darn good. She called it the Chocolate Crunch Cookie.

Ruth Wakefield my hero

She published it in her cookbook in 1938 and got the attention of the Betty Crocker radio show, and Nestle, who asked for the right to use her recipe and print it on their baking chocolate wrappers. Some of you might remember the Toll House cookie name: that was the original name of Ruth's cookies. Ruth originally thought these cookies should be served with ice cream, so do her proud people and break out that tradition.

A huge thanks goes to Sweet Tooth Design, who has done a ton on the history of cookies, and baking in general.