The Origin of Cupcakes

Cupcakes first made their appearance on the nineteenth century. In the earlier centuries, before the muffin tins were largely available, cakes were mostly baked in individual gem pots, pottery cups or ramekins and it is from here that they took their name from. This is the use of the name, which persisted and the name is now given to any cake that’s small in size about the size of teacup.

Cupcakes were also known as numbered cakes initially because the ingredients that were used in making them were measured by the small open containers, which are usually used for drinking. They were not measured by weight. Later, when volume measurements became popular in the home kitchens, they became popular as quarter or 1234 cakes. They were called so because their primary ingredients include: 1 cup butter, 2 cups sugar, 3 cups flour and 4 eggs.

These sweet dishes evolved in United States in the nineteenth century. It was a revolutionary for the amount that it took to make. There was a major shift from weighing out the ingredients while baking to measuring them out. However, the food historians are yet to identify exactly where the name of this sweet dessert originated from.
Mainly there are 2 theories.

A) The cakes were cooked originally in the small open containers with flat bottoms.
B) Ingredients used for making them were by the small open containers with flat bottoms.
Initially, they were sometimes known as number cakes because they were very easy to keep in mind by measurements of the ingredients with which it was made: 1 cup butter, 2 cups sugar, 3 cups flour, 4 eggs, 1 cup milk and 1 spoonful soda.

Today, these dessert items have expanded to various ingredients, shapes, measurements and decorations. However, this was the first recipe for preparing them. These deserts were convenient as they took much less time to prepare than the larger ones.

When baking used to be done down in the hearth ovens, it would take quite some time to bake and most of the time the end result would be burned. The muffin tins, also popular as gem pans, came in around twentieth century and so it was in this that people started to create the item.

Since their conception, these items have become the pop culture trend in culinary world. There are a number of bakeries that produce these sweet dishes nowadays.