Cup Cakes!

 

Cup cakes are one of the best selling desserts. It is fit to your delightful mood. This can make everyone happy.

 

A cupcake (also British English: fairy cake; Hiberno English: bun; Australian English: fairy cake or patty cake) is a small cake designed to serve one person, which may be baked in a small thin paper or aluminum cup. As with larger cakes, icing and other cake decorations, such as candy, may be applied.

 

History

The first mention of the cupcake can be traced as far back as 1796, when a recipe notation of “a light cake to bake in small cups” was written in American Cookery by Amelia Simmons.The earliest documentation of the term cupcake was in “Seventy-five Receipts for Pastry, Cakes, and Sweetmeats” in 1828 in Eliza Leslie’s Receipts cookbook.

In the early 19th century, there were two different uses for the name cup cake or cupcake. In previous centuries, before muffin tins were widely available, the cakes were often baked in individual pottery cups, ramekins, or molds and took their name from the cups they were baked in. This is the use of the name that has remained, and the name of “cupcake” is now given to any small cake that is about the size of a teacup. While English fairy cakes vary in size more than American cupcakes, they are traditionally smaller and are rarely topped with elaborate icing.

The other kind of “cup cake” referred to a cake whose ingredients were measured by volume, using a standard-sized cup, instead of being weighed. Recipes whose ingredients were measured using a standard-sized cup could also be baked in cups; however, they were more commonly baked in tins as layers or loaves. In later years, when the use of volume measurements was firmly established in home kitchens, these recipes became known as 1234 cakes or quarter cakes, so called because they are made up of four ingredients: one cup of butter, two cups of sugar, three cups of flour, and four eggs. They are plain yellow cakes, somewhat less rich and less expensive than pound cake, due to using about half as much butter and eggs compared to pound cake. The names of these two major classes of cakes were intended to signal the method to the baker; “cup cake” uses a volume measurement, and “pound cake” uses a weight measurement.

 

Ingredients
Cupcakes:
1 1/2 cups all purpose flour
1/4 cup unsweetened cocoa powder
1 cup granulated sugar
1 teaspoon baking soda
1/2 teaspoon salt
1 cup brewed coffee (or 1 cup of warm water mixed with 1 1/2 teaspoons of espresso powder or instant coffee granules)
1 Tbsp white vinegar
2 teaspoons vanilla extract
6 Tbsp (1/4 cup plus 2 Tbsp) olive oil
Frosting:
4 Tbsp butter
1/3 cup unsweetened cocoa powder
1 1/2 cup powdered sugar
3 tablespoons milk
1 tablespoon vanilla extract
Method
Cupcakes:
1 Preheat oven to 350°F with a rack in the middle position. Prepare a muffin tin with cupcake liners.
2 In a large bowl, vigorously whisk together the flour, cocoa powder, sugar, baking soda, and salt until there are no visible clumps (cocoa tends to clump up).
3 In a separate bowl, mix together the coffee (or water plus coffee granules), vinegar, vanilla extract, and olive oil.
4 Pour the wet ingredients into the dry ingredients and stir only until they just come together. The mixture should be thin and rather lumpy.
5 Ladle the batter into the cupcake liners, filling them about two-thirds of the way full. Place in oven and bake for 18 to 20 minutes, until a bamboo skewer inserted in the center comes out clean.
6 Remove from oven and let cool in the pan for 5 minutes, then remove from pan and let cool on a rack. Once cool, you can eat plain, sprinkle with powdered sugar, or drizzle or coat with frosting.
Frosting:
While the cupcakes are cooking, make the frosting. Melt butter in a small saucepan and remove from heat. Stir in the cocoa until smooth. Sprinkle in about a third of the powdered sugar, stir, then sprinkle in about a half of the milk. Keep alternating with the powdered sugar and either milk or vanilla, stirring after each addition, until the frosting is the consistency you want, and smooth. If it’s too runny, add more powdered sugar. If too stiff, add a little more milk or vanilla extract.
To pipe in a decorative pattern, scoop the frosting into the corner of a ziplock freezer bag. Use scissors to cut away 1/4-inch or so from the tip of the corner. Then just squeeze the frosting out of the bag onto the cupcakes in any design you like.

 

Variants

A cake in a mug is a variant that gained popularity on many internet cooking forums and mailing lists. The technique uses a mug as its cooking vessel and can be done in a microwave oven. The recipe often takes fewer than five minutes to prepare. The cake rises by mixing vegetable oil (usually olive oil or sunflower oil) into a mixture of flour and other ingredients – as the oil in the mixture heats up, it creates air pockets in the mixture which allows the cake to quickly rise. This variant has become popularised in recent years by the presence of numerous videos on social media websites, each claiming to detail the fastest method to create the finished product.
A cake in a jar is another way of making cupcakes. The baker uses a glass jar instead of muffin tins or cupcake liners.
A butterfly cake is a variant of cupcake,also called fairy cake for its fairy-like “wings”.They can be made from any flavor of cake. The top of the fairy cake is cut off or carved out with a spoon, and cut in half. Then, butter cream, whipped cream or other sweet filling (e.g. jam) is spread into the hole. Finally, the two cut halves are stuck into the butter cream to resemble butterfly wings. The wings of the cake are often decorated using icing to form various patterns.
Elaborately frosted cupcakes may be made for special occasions such as baby showers, graduations, or holidays.
A cake ball is an individual portion of cake, round like a chocolate truffle, that is coated in chocolate. These are typically formed from crumbled cake mixed with frosting, rather than being baked as a sphere.
A gourmet cupcake is a somewhat recent variant of cupcake. Gourmet cupcakes are large and filled cupcakes, based around a variety of flavor themes, such as Tiramisu or Cappuccino. In recent years there has been an upcropping of stores that sell only gourmet cupcakes in metropolitan areas.
As an alternative to a plate of individual cakes, some bakers place standard cupcakes into a pattern and frost them to create a large design, such as a basket of flowers or a turtle.

 

References

^ Simmons, Amelia (1996) [1796]. Hess, Karen, ed. American Cookery (2nd ed.). Bedford, Massachusetts [Albany, New York]: Applewood Books. p. 48.
^ “The Food Timeline”. Lynne Olver.
^ Leslie, Eliza, Seventy-five Receipts for Pastry, Cakes, and Sweetmeats (Boston, Massachusetts: Munroe and Francis, 1828), p. 61.
^ “Food Timeline”. Retrieved 5 April 2010.
^ a b “The Food Timeline: cake history notes”. Retrieved 14 March 2008.
^ Cupcakes – Food Timeline
^ Sakin, Melike; Kaymak-Ertekin, Figen; Ilicali, Coskan (2007-12-01). “Simultaneous heat and mass transfer simulation applied to convective oven cup cake baking”. Journal of Food Engineering. 83 (3): 463–474. doi:10.1016/j.jfoodeng.2007.04.007.
^ Baik, O. D.; Sablani, S. S.; Marcotte, M.; Castaigne, F. (1999-03-01). “Modeling the Thermal Properties of a Cup Cake During Baking”. Journal of Food Science. 64 (2): 295–299. doi:10.1111/j.1365-2621.1999.tb15886.x. ISSN 1750-3841.
^ Farrow, Joanna (2005). Cupcakes. Vancouver: Whitecap Books. pp. 40–41. ISBN 1-55285-626-7.
^ Mackley, Lesley (1992). The Book of Afternoon Tea. Los Angeles: HP Books. p. 69. ISBN 1-55788-046-8.
^ Moskin, Julia; Gand, Gale (2001). Gale Gand’s just a bite: 125 luscious little desserts. New York: Clarkson Potter. pp. 68–69. ISBN 0-609-60825-8.
^ Byrn, Anne (2005). Cupcakes: From the Cake Mix Doctor. Workman Publishing. pp. 98–100. ISBN 0-7611-3548-0.
^ Klivans, Elinor (2005). Cupcakes. San Francisco: Chronicle Books. pp. 80–81. ISBN 0-8118-4545-1.
^ Cupcakes | How To and Instructions | Martha Stewart
^ “Cool Cakes for 2010” by Simone Sant-Ghuran (7 Feb 2010) at The Guardian Trinidad and Tobago Archived 14 February 2010 at the Wayback Machine.
^ “New York Cupcakes”. Little Views. 4 February 2006. Retrieved 29 March 2011.
^ See, for example, this recipe for a turtle-shaped cake made from cupcakes, or these photos.
^ a b “The Joy of Baking”. Scroll down the page to section labeled “PANS”.
^ Smith, Lindy. Bake me I’m Yours… Cupcake Celebration. David & Charles: Newton Abbot; 2010. ISBN 9780715337707. p. 7.
^ “Cupcake Passion More Than a Trend”. CNN. 15 January 2010. Retrieved 27 October 2010.
^ Maltby, Emily; Needleman, Sarah (17 April 2013). “Forget Gold, the Gourmet Cupcake Market Is Crashing – WSJ.com”. The Wall Street Journal. Retrieved 28 April 2013.
^ Clark, Cindy (15 July 2010). “‘DC Cupcakes’: Washington’s purveyors of power pastry”. USA Today.
^ “Why We Love The Cupcake”. Huffington Post. 14 November 2012.
^ “More cupcakes! Sprinkles shuts down ATM to increase capacity (Video)”. 17 January 2014. Retrieved 6 July 2016.
^ “Periodic Table Cupcakes”. The Huffington Post. Retrieved 7 January 2014.
^ “Faces of Chemistry: Ida Freund”. Royal Society of Chemistry.

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