

The next time you're pondering what to serve at your next buffet or take to the office pitch-in, consider the little cupcake. Both cupcakes and muffins can be made in the same style of tin and contain mostly the same ingredients. cupcake question showcases one of the problems with making culinary divisions between similar foods.

Two notable differences are that cupcakes are usually frosted and have a lighter consistency than muffins. Well, although there's a margin for interpretation here, cupcakes are typically sweet confections while muffins are savory.

Muffins and cupcakes can look similar, so what's the real difference between them? This leads to an interesting distinction between small, individual cake-like pastries. It could have been a way to use up extra batter to make the most efficient use of a hot oven by placing small ramekins, or little baking dishes, in unused spaces or to create an evenly baked product fast when fuel was in short supply.Įarly 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. The notion of baking small cakes in individual containers probably began with the use of clay or earthenware mugs. This tells us that the origin of the diminutive cupcakes we all know and love dates from at least the early 19th century. From a recipe published in 1828, we find instructions for baking a cup-measured cake in small tins instead of a large pan. When food historians approach the topic of cupcakes, they run into a gray area in which the practice of making individual cup-sized cakes can become confused with the convention of making cakes with cup-measured ingredients. Pound cakes use the same device, by weight, for remembering ingredient proportions. It went something like this: one cup of butter, two cups of sugar, three cups of flour and so on. The first incarnation of the cup cake was probably a standard cake recipe using ingredient quantities in cup measurements to make remembering the directions easier.
#The cupcake baker how to
It's likely that you didn't know how to read, so your recipes, the closely guarded secrets of your culinary success, were memorized and handed down from generation to generation. Imagine being a cook in 19th-century Britain or North America. The modern idea of the cupcake is probably different from the historical origin of the phrase.
#The cupcake baker full
It opens the door to a debate about which came first, a cake full of cups (of ingredients) or a cup filled with cake. To explore the murky history of the cupcake, though, it's first necessary to distinguish them from cup cakes (the space is important). They're portion-controlled, portable, easy to make in batches, open to lots of decorating strategies, tasty and can be inexpensive to make. Please follow my business – I appreciate the support – and I look forward to growing the bakery into Aberdeen’s number one sweet treat cake business.Cupcakes seem uniquely suited to our modern sensibilities. The name ‘The Fat Sparrow Bakery’ came about five years ago when I was looking out the window at a very fat bird and I asked my sister and brother-in-law what type of bird it was – you guessed it – it was a fat sparrow! We loved it and thought it would be a great name for a bakery, and so The Fat Sparrow Bakery was born. From this base knowledge of baking, I have built my skills and confidence over the years to finally take the leap and give The Fat Sparrow Bakery the chance it deserves (online for now!). I’m originally from Sutherland and I come from a long line of talented cooks and bakers who taught me how to make traditional Scottish bakes from pancakes and shortbread to irresistible sweet treats like tablet. Here’s me! I am Graeme, owner and chief baker of The Fat Sparrow Bakery.įrom a young age I formed a keen interest in cooking and the concept of creating food that both tastes delicious and looks irresistible to the eyes.
