Book I Recommend: Riding The Storm by Ben M. Baglio

Hey, everyone! This is my 49th book recommendation. I hope you enjoy!

1. Riding The Storm by Ben M. Baglio

2. Return to the Ice Palace by Erica David

3.  Lacey the Little Mermaid by Daisy Meadows

4. Aisha the Princess and the Pea by Daisy Meadows

5. Designs by Isabelle by Laurence Yep

6. Hour of the Olympics by Mary Pope Osborne

7. Where Is the Parthenon? by Roberta Edwards

8. Eve of the Emperor Penguin by Mary Pope Osborne

9. Regarding the Sink by Kate Klise

10. Oklahoma by Blake Hoena

11. Jack and the Fire Dragon by Gail E. Haley

12. Liar, Liar, Pants On Fire by Diane deGroat

13. My Dadima Wears a Sari by Kashmira Sheth

14. The White Swan Express by Jean Davies Okimoto

15. Once Upon A Cloud by  Rob D. Walker

16. Poison Dart Frog by Tamra B. Orr

17. Sea Horse by Chris Butterworth

18. Bald Eagles by Arlene Worsley

19. World of Birds by Kim Kurki

20. Weather by Joel Rubin

21. Droughts by Neil Morris

22. Tortilla Sun by Jennifer Cervantes

23. Horrible Harry and the Birthday Girl by Suzy Kline

24. Mysterious Patterns by Sarah C. Campbell

25. About Time by Bruce Koscielniak

26. The Waterfall by Jonathan London

27. The Kids’ Guide to Nature Adventures by Joe Rhatigan

28. Ramona The Brave by Beverly Clearly

29. Meteorology by Christine Taylor-Butler

30. Fun With Nature by Mel Boring

31. Ramona and Her Mother by Beverly Clearly

32. William Lloyd Garrison by Nick Fauchald

33. When Blue Met Egg by Lindsey Ward

34. The Graves Family by Patricia Polacco

35. Arctic Thaw by Peter Lourie

36. The Shining  Princess by Eric Quayle

37. Northwest Weeds by Ronald J. Taylor

38. The Wild Life of Jane Goodall by Anita Silvey

39. Halloween Crafts by Jean Eick

40. June 29, 1999 by David Wiesner

41. The Trees of the Dancing Goats by Patricia Polacco

42. The Patchwork Quilt by Valerie Flournoy

43.  My Rotten Redheaded Older Brother by Patricia Polacco

44. Fiona’s Lace by Patricia Polacco

45. The Mysterious Cheese Thief by Geronimo Stilton

46. Kimberly the Koala Fairy by Daisy Meadows

47. Carly the School Fairy by Daisy Meadows

48. Sunflowers by Joe Pappalardo

49. The Fantastic Family Whipple by Matthew Ward

50. The New Stokes Field Guide to Birds by Donald and Lillian Stokes

51. The Secret Admirer by Erica David

(The blue links are Amazon Affilatw

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Hello, everyone! You might want to know more about Christmas. Thank you for visiting my blog! Christmas is my favorite holiday. In Argentina, the weather is almost always warm at Christmas. Preparations for Christmas begin very early in December and … Continue reading

The History of Cupcakes

Hi there! I decided to research about cupcakes because I was reading a fictional cupcake book. Hope you enjoy the cupcake facts!

The cupcake evolved in the United States in the 19th century, and it was revolutionary because of the amount of time it saved in the kitchen. There was a shift from weighing out ingredients when baking to measuring out ingredients. According to the Food Timeline Web, food historians have yet to pinpoint exactly where the name of the cupcake originated.

There are two theories: one, the cakes were originally cooked in cups and two, the ingredients used to make the cupcakes were measured out by the cup. In the beginning, cupcakes were sometimes called “number” cakes, because they were easy to remember by the measurements of ingredients it took to create them: One cup of butter, two cups of sugar, three cups of flour, four eggs, one cup of milk, and one spoonful of soda. Clearly, cupcakes today have expanded to a wide variety of ingredients, measurements, shapes, and decorations – but this was one of the first recipes for making what we know today as cupcakes.

Cupcakes were convenient because they cooked much quicker than larger cakes. When baking was down in hearth ovens, it would take a long time to bake a cake, and the final product would often be burned. Muffin tins, also called gem pans, were popular around the turn of the 20th century, so people started created cupcakes in tins.

Since their creation, cupcakes have become a pop culture trend in the culinary world. They have spawned dozens of bakeries devoted entirely to them. While chocolate and vanilla remain classic favorites, fancy flavors such as raspberry meringue and espresso fudge can be found on menus.

There are cookbooks, blogs, and magazines specifically dedicated to cupcakes. Icing, also called frosting in the United States, is a sweet often creamy glaze made of sugar with a liquid, such as water or milk, that is often enriched with ingredients such as butter, egg whites, cream cheese, or flavorings. It is used to cover or decorate baked goods.

Elizabeth Raffald documented the first recipe for icing in 1769 in the Experienced English Housekeeper, according to the Food Timeline. The simplest icing is a glace icing, containing powdered sugar and water. This can be flavored and colored as desired, for example, by using lemon juice in place of the water.

More complicated icings can be made by beating fat into powdered sugar (as in buttercream), by melting fat and sugar together, by using egg whites (as in royal icing), and by adding other ingredients such as glycerin (as in fondant). Some icings can be made from combinations of sugar and cream cheese or sour cream, or by using ground almonds (as in marzipan). The first mention of the cupcake can be traced as far back as 1796, when a recipe notation of “a cake to be baked in small cups” was written in American Cookery by Amelia Simmons.

The earliest documentation of the term cupcake was in ‘Seventy-five Receipts for Pastry, Cakes, and Sweetmeats’ in 1828 in Eliza Leslie’s Receipts cookbook. In the early 19th century, there were two different uses for the name cup cake or cupcake. In previous centuries, before muffin tins were widely available, the cakes were often baked in individual pottery cups, ramekins, or molds and took their name from the cups they were baked in.

This is the use of the name that has remained, and the name of “cupcake” is now given to any small cake that is about the size of a teacup. The name “fairy cake” is a fanciful description of its size, which would be appropriate for a party of diminutive fairies to share. While English fairy cakes vary in size more than American cupcakes, they are traditionally smaller and are rarely topped with elaborate icing.

The other kind of “cup cake” referred to a cake whose ingredients were measured by volume, using a standard-sized cup, instead of being weighed. Recipes whose ingredients were measured using a standard-sized cup could also be baked in cups; however, they were more commonly baked in tins as layers or loaves. In later years, when the use of volume measurements was firmly established in home kitchens, these recipes became known as 1234 cakes or quarter cakes, so called because they are made up of four ingredients: one cup of butter, two cups of sugar, three cups of flour, and four eggs.

They are plain yellow cakes, somewhat less rich and less expensive than pound cake, due to using about half as much butter and eggs compared to pound cake. The names of these two major classes of cakes were intended to signal the method to the baker; “cup cake” uses a volume measurement, and “pound cake” uses a weight measurement. Cupcakes have become more than a trend over the years, they’ve become an industry!

Paper baking cups first hit U.S. markets after the end of the World War II. An artillery manufacturer called the James River Corporation began manufacturing cupcake liners for U.S. markets when its military markets began to diminish. By 1969, they consolidated business as a paper company and left artillery manufacturing behind.

During the 1950s, the paper baking cup gained popularity as U.S. housewives purchased them for convenience. Their flexibility grew when bakers realized that they could bake muffins as well as cupcakes in the baking cups. The modern idea of the cupcake is probably different from the historical origin of the phrase.

Imagine what it would be like being a cook in 19th-century Britain or North America. 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. The notion of baking small cakes in individual containers probably began with the use of clay or earthenware mugs.

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. Early 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. Cakes in some form have been around since ancient times, and today’s familiar round cakes with frosting can be traced back to the 17th century, made possible by advances in food technology such as: better ovens, metal cake molds and pans, and the refinement of sugar.

I got it at storify.com but I originally got it at Google Images.

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Websites I used:

https://iml.jou.ufl.edu/projects/spring07/ayers/history.html

https://people.rit.edu/kge3737/320/project3/history.html

https://recipes.howstuffworks.com/food-facts/who-invented-the-cupcake.htm

https://inventors.about.com/od/cstartinventions/a/Who-Invented-The-Cupcake.htm