National Chocolate Cupcake Day

I’ve never met a problem a proper cupcake couldn’t fix.

Sarah Ockler, Bittersweet

You know what’s better than a cake? Chocolate cake. You know what’s better than chocolate cake? A chocolate cupcake. That’s right, while we absolutely adore our cake, there’s a certain tug of delightful selfishness in a cake you can consume all to yourself, letting you revel in a little piece of gluttony. National Chocolate Cupcake Day reminds us that sometimes it is more than acceptable to have a piece of confectionary delight that we simply don’t share with another, so find yourself a cupcake and make it disappear, just be sure it’s chocolate!

History of National Chocolate Cupcake Day

National Chocolate Cupcake Day was established to celebrate that most perfect form of the Cupcake, the Chocolate Cupcake. Cupcakes are called by many names throughout the world, our personal favorite would have to be the term “Fairy Cake” from the British. The origin of the cupcake seems to go back as far as 1796, where cakes cooked in small cups were first mentioned, and the actual term cupcake was first seen in Eliza Leslie’s 1828 cookbook.

Following that, there was a bit of a lull in the cupcake scene. But in 1919, food company Hostess began making what we would recognize today as the first mass-produced cupcake, popularizing the concept. Interestingly, the company’s cakes weren’t a flash in the pan. They remain its most popular brand, beating out Twinkies, selling more than 600 million per year.

In the 1950s, British prime minister Winston Churchill suggested that manufacturers update cupcakes. Instead of making them with just dried fruit and spices, he suggested adding icing sugar. Later in his life, he blamed the humble cupcake for his jowl.

However, the real hey-day of cupcakes wasn’t the 1950s, but the 2000s. The decade saw a flurry of activity on the cupcake scene, with recipes published in major newspapers and commercial outlets introducing new lines. In 2005, Sprinkles Cupcakes opened the world’s first cupcake-only bakery. It now sells more than 25,000 cupcakes per day across eleven stores.

So popular is the idea of a personal cake, a cake of diminutive size, that there have been many different variations on both the style and technique. The invention of the microwave has even created recipes that enable you to mix and cook a cupcake in less than five minutes! Talk about the perfect cake, is there anything better than unabashedly delicious instant gratification? We don’t think so!

It’s worth noting that one needn’t actually bake a cupcake in a cup or even a cupcake tin.

Take, for example, the periodic table of cupcakes. These are cupcakes frosted in colors to match the periodic table of elements and then marked with each of the elements in black frosting. While these have been made in traditional cupcake tins, they have also been made as sheet cakes, cut down to cupcake size, and frosted appropriately!

Cupcakes are really all about the size of the end result, not the method of getting there, and National Chocolate Cupcake Day tells you to indulge in every variation, as long as it contains chocolate!

How to celebrate National Chocolate Cupcake Day

Here’s an idea: indulge yourself in the most delicious of cupcakes, the chocolate cupcake when National Chocolate Cupcake Day comes around. It should hardly require any encouragement to have you scarfing up all the delicious chocolate cupcakes you can find, and on National Chocolate Cupcake Day, there is certainly nothing wrong with indulging in chocolate cupcakes at every meal!

If you love experimenting in the kitchen, you might also want to check out a range of chocolate-themed recipes. Additional flavor options include coffee, peanut butter, cherry cola, orange cream, strawberry, and salted caramel. These ingredients add a new dimension to your baking and allow you to enjoy chocolate complemented by other delicious flavors.

Another idea is to host a chocolate cupcake party. Here, each person brings along a chocolate-themed cupcake with them, and you can sample each other’s recipes. What type of chocolate cake will you make? Double-chocolate with choccy sponge and icing? What about a triple chocolate version that also has chocolate drops mixed into the batter? Having a tea party lets you share ideas and get new inspiration for the kitchen.

National Chocolate Cupcake Day also has a significant social media presence. Those interested can share information about the day through Facebook and Instagram accounts and link people to relevant pages.

Chocolate cupcakes are more than just food to delight the taste buds, though. They’re also something that helps many people push through the struggles and strains of life. The comfort of a delicious cupcake is something that you can enjoy in the evening after a busy day. One idea, therefore, is to use the day to write a blog post about what makes chocolate cupcakes so important to you. You don’t even have to include a recipe if you don’t want to. It can be a simple conversation about your experience with this popular, hand-held food item, and how it has helped you in the past.

Finally, if you have a killer chocolate cupcake recipe, you can share this with the people you know online. If you’ve made something so delicious that nobody can resist, then don’t keep it to yourself: share it! Or if you want to direct people to your site, post it!

National Chocolate Cupcake Day, therefore, is about more than just eating. It is also about celebrating the genius invention of the cupcake. There’s nothing more enjoyable than sitting down to one of these delectable sweets and knowing it is all yours.