Cupcake Recipe That Beats A Million!

Growing up, I was surrounded by relatives who cooked, and ate, and cooked, and talked about cooking when they weren't eating and cooking.

My grandmother and her sisters tried to outdo each other when preparing favorite dishes for favored people, sometimes even resorting to sabotaging the other's dish. I don't know why they even spoke, but the competition stayed somewhere between mad frenzy and murder. Sunday dinner with the preacher often showed that neither cook nor sister of cook had listened to the sermon. The preacher loved it all and wouldn't have missed one of these lunches.

My aunts and grandmother rarely made cupcakes, preferring the sheet cake or the layer cake to show off their talents. I didn't care what they put the batter in, as long as they cut me a slice when it was done.

I love the cupcake, but I must admit, my favorite cake is the 13 inch pan size; stir, mix, beat, pour, and bake. Oh yeah, and eat.

However, for the lover of cupcakes, these "not your birthday cupcakes" are wonderful on a lazy weekend afternoon, and with Fall in the air, why not sit on your porch or in the backyard with the birds, enjoying chocolate and the sounds of Fall?

You won't even sweat with effort, except for the waiting with this easy recipe! From saucepan, to mixing bowl, from baking pan to plate, you're there in short time. This is an older recipe, but it beats most by a million! Me, mother of many, likes to keep baking simple. 

Keep the paper cupcake liners in your pantry, for this deliciously simple recipe! You'll be baking it more than once.

Assemble:

• 4 squares of semi-sweet chocolate (no substitutes for this old-fashioned recipe)
• 1 c unsalted butter, melted
• 3 c pecans, halved, or 2 cups chopped, I prefer chopped
• 1 3/4 c sugar
• 1 c flour, unsifted
• 4 eggs
• 1 tsp vanilla

Procedure:

1. In saucepan, melt chocolate and butter on low heat, stiring.
2. Add pecans or nuts of your choice, and stir until well mixed. Set aside.
3. Blend sugar, flour, and eggs on low speed
4. Add chocolate and pecan mixture, stir until blended and then stir in vanilla. Do not beat either of these steps.
5. Place paper baking cups in muffin tins and fill completely with batter.
6. Bake in 325 oven, for 35 minutes. Cool at least 10 minutes.

I don't even frost these, but you certainly could. I think you can never have too much chocolate. Now, how quick and easy is this?

Let me know how it turns out, in fact, send them over!

Where did the idea of the cupcake come from?

In the 19th Century, the cupcake "appeared" probably out of need for a quicker dessert cake, most likely getting its name from either being baked in a cup, or from ingredients which were measure by a cup. Food historians don't seem to be sure which habit formed the name "cupcake," but that question has not slowed the popularity of this pretty, smaller portion sized cake.

Some people referred to cupcakes as number cakes, because the ingredients for them were so easy to remember.

A basic recipe such as 1 cup of butter, 2 cups of sugar, 3 cups of flour, 4 eggs, and 1 cup of milk and lastly 1 spoonful of soda, clearly demonstrates the easy recipe of succulent cake! Varying ingredients, changing milk to buttermilk, and adding flavoring still keeps these little cakes full of the most simple tasks!

Of course the popular food network show Cupcake Wars today has taken cupcakes to a higher level of complexity, but I'm not so sure that makes them any tastier.

Try the above original "cup of this and that" and see what you think? What would you do to improve upon it? I love it's simplicity.

Cupcakes appeal to cooks because they cook much more quickly than cakes, and when you think about how baking was done many years ago in a hearth oven, "quick" was preferred! Today, cooks, families and individuals still love the quick, warm, "special for me" size of moist heaven-in-the-mouth cake.

When muffin tins and "gem pans" became popular at a the turn of the 20th century, bakers created cupakes in the tins, and families brought the practice home, too!

Cupcakes have taken their place of delight in the culinary world, many bakeries are devoted to the sole creation of heaven in a tin. It's hard to beat the flavors of chocolate and vanilla, but tempt your taste buds with raspberry meringue or espresso fudge and see how your tongue responds!

Do you love them enough to create a blog just for the cupcake?

The only other ingredient I'd add to those above is kids in the kitchen!

Come closer, cupcake!