Cup Cake: Historical Food Fortnightly Challenge #9

For background on the Historical Food Fortnightly, click here.

The Challenge: The Frugal Housewife September 21 - October 4
Throughout history, housewives and housekeepers have kept a close eye on their budgets and found creative ways to pinch pennies while providing delicious and nutritious food. Create a dish that interprets one historically-documented method of frugal cooking.

I knew that for this challenge, I could depend on Mrs. Lydia Child (sort-of authoress of The American Frugal Housewife...and by that I mean she basically repackaged the content someone else wrote.  Deets here.)  She did not disappoint.  Not only is her whole book dedicated to economy, but she had instructions for cakes that got progressively cheaper!  I couldn't do the Tea Cake because I don't really keep pearlash around and even if I did, I'm not sure I would bake with it.  Read here for another participant's experience with pearlash.  But, the cup cake was a winner.  And everything turned out swimmingly, from the discovery that it works with my home made GF baking mix made with ingredients I can purchase in Peru to the taste of both regular and gluten free versions.  The only problem was the foil cupcake wrappers that lost some of their color on the cupcakes.....

We will be using these for a party that our eldest is throwing, just because.  It's always helpful to have some reason or audience for your baking experiments.....

The Recipe: Cup Cake, The American Frugal Housewife: Dedicated to Those who are Not Ashamed of Economy, Lydia Child, 1841, (p. 71 in this edition.)

"Cup cake is about as good as pound cake, and is cheaper."  How's that for economy!

The Date/Year and Region: Recipe is English, published 1841 in New York.

How Did You Make It: I cheated and conserved my time by using my hand mixer. But I put in the butter, then the sugar, creamed them per conventional standards. Then I added the flour, mixed until coarse crumbs, then finished off with the eggs.

I opted for about 3/4 cup whole wheat coarse ground flour and 1 1/2 cup regular white flour.  I used Azucar Rubia, which is a brownish sugar that has a grain like white sugar but is slightly less processed (I think that's the difference...it's what I have more of right now.)

Time to Complete: Approximately 30 minutes to mix up two batches and another 40 minutes to cook.  First I made a 1/4 batch using gluten free flour.   I did NOT add any Xanthan gum for the cupcakes (I mix up a batch of the GF flour and typically add Xanthan gum as I am making up the recipe.)  See below for GF flour recipe.  I also made a 3/4 batch using regular flour.  I did have small children helping me, so you could probably achieve the end result faster.

From Mary's Busy Kitchen - Basic Rice Flour Mix - can be used to replace wheat flour in any recipe. 

 *add 1 tsp Xanthan Gum per cup of flour for yeast based recipes and 1/2 tsp Xanthan Gum per cup of flour for all other baking)

3 cups rice flour (brown or white)

3 cups tapioca flour

3 cups cornstarch

3 Tbsp potato flour (not potato starch)

Total Cost: I had everything on hand....but I think it was pretty economical.

How Successful Was It?: They taste good, both the regular and gluten free. I cooked them for 20 minutes at about 300 degrees F.  They were very soupy in the middle, so I rotated the pans and changed shelves from top to bottom and bottom to top.  In the end, some of them have a crispy but edible crust and the color from the foil wrappers leaked onto the batter....but still should be ok for kids who may leave behind the crust anyway.  They also puffed up much more than I had expected given the lack of additional leavening agent.

How Accurate Is It?: I think the ingredients are ok for accuracy (excepting the GF flour).  But, it was a pleasant surprise to note that 1/4 of the recipe makes 4 cupcakes and they taste good!  This may be my new go-to recipe for cupcakes.  It's handy to be able to bring something to a birthday party where your GF kid might not otherwise have something and it's very fast.  You could easily make these in a toaster oven.  The recipe uses very basic ingredients.  I also don't have real tea cups to use here, so I used cup cake liners instead.  That will be better for the party anyway.

Time to Research: I spent about 1 hour trying to find a tomato paste recipe as I bought tomatoes to make some tomato paste and could (theoretically) kill two birds with one stone. Alas, it was not to be. Sauce and catsup recipes abounded, but tomato paste by itself was elusive. At least pre-1960s documentation with ingredients I had on hand eluded me. I made the tomato paste anyway and it was delicious.  So, I was double frugal this week!

Four simple ingredients: Butter, Sugar, Flour, Eggs

It made a much thicker, stickier batter than I associate with cakes made in the modern era.

The 1/4 recipe made 4 gluten free cupcakes, but when I did a 3/4 recipe (aiming for 12) I actually got 16 cupcakes using regular flour.

The finished product fell a bit from their nice domes immediately after taking out of the oven.  You can see the interior of the tester cupcake.

Bonus Pictures of the Tomato Sauce that didn't make it for the challenge.

Our delicious, organic tomatoes!  Usually our tomatoes here are devoid of taste but these are so yummy!

In process.  I stopped taking pictures at this point knowing that I was going to do something else for the challenge.