A gem of a story, with liner notes

The inspiration for this post came in the form of a vintage photo of paper cup cake liners. After discovering that the cup cake was a distant cousin of the pound cake (see last post), the image of those faded little pleated paper cups got me wondering and so I let my fingers do the tapping. 

What we call cup liners are also referred to as paper cases, patty pans, and baking cups, depending on where you call home. So the story goes that “in the beginning”, cupcakes were baked in individual pottery cups, ramekins, moulds, or gem pans or irons. A gem pan? I had to look that up. According to the web, a gem is a type of bread, much like a muffin. But it's the pan itself that appears to be behind the name, since it looks like the facets of a gem. The pan is made up of compartments that can hold about a quarter cup of dough and is traditionally made of cast iron. Here's an example:

You’ll note that the "cups" have cut outs between them, which allowed for even heat distribution, but were still connected so that the heat could be transmitted through the iron. I suspect it was just a matter of time before one clever cook substituted bread batter for cake batter and discovered the cup cake. In fact, the earliest reference to a “cup cake” is apparently found in Amelia Simmons book, American Cookery (1796) where she mentions a “cake to be baked in small cups.” According to the Food Timeline Web site, the earliest mention of a cup cake recipe was found in Eliza Leslie’s cookbook Seventy-five Receipts, for Pastry, Cakes, and Sweetmeats, published in Boston in 1828. Once again, note the author credit, “By a lady of Philadelphia”.  

Did you know that the first edition of Sense and Sensibility in 1811 also was authored “By a lady”? Though it’s my understanding that Jane Austen chose to remain anonymous. Fascinating.

But I digress. So we can see how muffin/cupcake pans evolved over time. But when did the paper liner come into being, and why? Prior to liners, bakers had to use oil or fat and flour to ensure their cakes did not stick to pans.  As I conducted my online research, I found a multitude of sites that repeated the exact same information: “paper liners did not come into use until after WWI when the James River Corporation began manufacturing the liners on machines that had been making artillery shells just a few years before.” Yet upon further research, I was unable to validate this claim. It sounds very romantic, ammunition to cupcake liners, but I’m not convinced. 

According to the Food Timeline Web site, the paper cup was introduced to serve food with – not bake in. One excerpt I came across recommended homemakers not waste their money purchasing muffin pans but rather, use paper cups instead which could be set directly “on the oven grill.” May be convenient, but any wise homemaker back then would have opted for the $0.59 pan (on sale), rather than keep paying $0.15 for a box of 85 liners. Unless the goal was making an impression at the next PTA meeting.

In my attempt to date cups, I did find a US federal trademark registration for Betty Brite paper baking cups filed in 1955 by the American Lace Paper Company of Milwaukee.

These baking cups were manufactured by the Frank M. Sayford Company in Connecticut. Unfortunately, I was unable to date them. These were "scorch resistant". How convenient!

These lovelies are Barbie brand “treated” paper cups that I found listed at the Black Oak Vintage Shop on Etsy. I tried finding information on the Barbie brand but got nowhere. That's not true. Lots of plastic but no paper.  

I did come across a fascinating article called “The Golden Age of Patty Pans” written by Peter Sheen which describes the patty pans (paper cups) in the La Trobe Collection housed at the State Library of Victoria in Australia. The article refers to the golden age of the paper cups as being from 1930 to 1950, so this dates the cupcake liner back to 1930, at least down under.

Ultimately, paper baking cups were introduced to save cleaning time and provide a sanitary way of handling individual cakes. They also help keep cup cakes moist.

So after all this research, I decided to make the cupcake recipe found in Miss Leslie’s 1828 cookbook:

Cup Cake

5 eggs.Two large teacupfulls of molasses.The same of brown sugar, rolled fine.The same of fresh butter.One cup of rich milk.Five cups of flour, sifted.Half a cup of powdered allspice and cloves.Half a cup of ginger.

Cut up the butter in the milk, and warm them slightly. Warm also the molasses, and stir it into the milk and butter: then stir in, gradually, the sugar, and set it away to get cool.Beat the eggs very light, and stir them into the mixture alternately with the flour. Add the ginger and other spice, and stir the whole very hard. Butter small tins, nearly fill them with the mixture, and bake the cakes in a moderate oven.

Half a teacupful of molasses. Yes, I measured everything with the teacup.

After stirring very hard, I baked them at 350º F but had to keep an eye on them because the recipe failed to provide a baking time. Did you notice that the recipe called for cloves? Well, I just happened to have on hand a bottle of cloves passed down from my mother who passed it down from her mother, my grandmother Alice Gervais Bouffard. And as you can see, the bottle is not empty so I just HAD to use a couple of sprinkles to “vintage” up my recipe.

Also passed down from “Memeille Bouffard” is the Bake-Rite waffle texture muffin pan. So in the end, I didn’t use paper cups because I'm almost certain neither did Miss Leslie. And this is what the final product looked like:

I may have overcooked them a tad. They smelled real nice, though - molasses and spices - but they were, let's just say, rather dense. What I can't figure out is why they all had an indent on the bottom, like some wine bottles do. I wonder if my vintage cloves had anything to do with it... or maybe the pan.

Oh well, so ends our misadventure in vintage baking this week. You win some, you lose some.

If anyone needs hockey pucks, I've got a few scented ones you can have.

Bonne semaine !