Ah, the ubiquitous cupcake, captured here in a sixties magazine picture and displaying them in all their gaudy glory!
But their initial appearance was, in fact, a good deal earlier. 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.
But the English prefer a plainer, less fussy cake such as the fairy cake which are traditionally smaller and rarely topped with such elaborate icing like these. What follows here is another selection of English tea (as in teatime) cakes from the mid-fifties.
Although this is not to say that the larger examples cannot be just as gaudy!
Take for example this somewhat riotous Swiss Roll collection!
And here (below) is a regular Carmen Miranda of a cake, despite the black and white image!
Further cakes can be found below:
Granny Robertson's Cookbook 