Chocolate Cupcake Day

What the day is

Chocolate Cupcake Day is observed on October 18. The cupcake is simply a small cake baked in an individual mold, and the chocolate version is the one most people default to.

Origin and background

The origin of the observance is not documented. The name has two competing explanations and both are plausible. One is literal: early versions were baked in individual cups or ramekins, since small tins were not yet common. The other is a measurement, from cup cake, an American recipe style written in volumes rather than weights, typically a cup of butter, two of sugar, three of flour and four eggs. Both usages appear in nineteenth-century American cookbooks.

Chocolate cake has a specific technical wrinkle worth knowing. Natural cocoa powder is acidic and reacts with baking soda to produce lift; Dutch-process cocoa has been alkalized, is darker and mellower, and will not react the same way. Substituting one for the other without adjusting the raising agent is the usual reason a chocolate cupcake comes out dense and flat.

The other common failure is overbaking. A cupcake is small, so the margin between set and dry is a couple of minutes, and the residual heat in the tin keeps cooking it after it leaves the oven.

The cupcake boom of the 2000s, driven by bakery chains and television, has largely subsided, which is arguably good for the cupcake. The frosting-to-cake ratios of that period were structural rather than edible.

How to take part

• Bloom the cocoa in hot coffee or boiling water before mixing. It deepens the flavor noticeably and costs nothing.
• Fill liners two-thirds full, no more, or they dome over the edges and tear.
• Check two minutes early. A skewer should come out with a few moist crumbs, not clean.
• Turn them out of the tin promptly onto a rack so the bottoms do not steam.
• Cool completely before frosting, unless you want soup.
• Keep the frosting in proportion. The cake should still be the larger part.