History of cupcakes

Cupcake was first mentioned in the American Cookery, recipe written by Amelia Simmons in 1796, as “a cake to be baked in small cups”. The earliest documentation of the term cupcake was in Seventy-five Receipts for Pastry, Cakes, and Sweetmeats in 1828 in Eliza Leslie's Recipes cookbook. According to the Food Timeline Web, the food historians have yet to discover the exact originality of the name of cupcakes. There are two sayings about the name of the cupcakes originated, which are one, the cupcakes are originally cooked in the cups, and two, the ingredients used to make the cupcakes were measured out by the cup. In the beginning, cupcakes were named "number" cakes at times because they were easy to remember by the measurements of ingredients it took to make them: One cup of butter, two cups of sugar, three cups of flour, four eggs, one cup of milk, and one spoonful of soda. In the early 19th century, there were two different uses for the name “cup cake” or “cupcake”. In previous centuries, the cakes were often baked in individual pottery cups before the widely used of muffin tins. Hence, “cup cakes” took their name from the cups they were baked in. On the other hand, the name of "cupcake" is now given to any small cake that is about the size of a teacup.