Cup cakes / fairy cakes

[jjazz]

Ongoing debate between DH and me; is the term 'cup cake' an Americanism- surely we used to call them fairy cakes until the recent baking craze?? or are cup cakes and fairy cakes different in some way....?

I always think of cup cakes as sponge cakes made in muffin cases (ie larger). Also, they always have buttercream type icing, wheras fairy are simple glace with sprinkles etc

cupcakes are big american things with too much buttercream on them and in garish colours

a fairy cake is in a bun tin, smaller with icing or Nutella which ds1 loves!

Until the latest craze, to me cupcakes were those bought ones with the flat, thick, solid, edge to edge icing in orange, lemon and chocolate (2 of each to a box of 6 - normally next to fondant fancies)

Fairy cakes suggested either a blob of icing and a smartie/jellytot, or a the top cut off, cut in two and stuck back to the top as wings.

I can't for the life of me remember what we called them otherwise

I agree with Collision. I use buttercream on fairy cakes, but spread it thinly. I can't bear the thick swirls of buttercream on those large cakes and scrape most of it off on the odd occasion I am tempted to eat one.

chunkypickle they're butterfly cakes.

Can I join in to have a moan. Lovely friend bought me a lovely book of cupcake recipes. Made some yesterday but the stupid author woman didn't specify that I needed MUFFIN cases not CAKE cases (which I'd bought), so I had about 1/3 of the mix left over after filling the cases.

So YES OP, YOU are RIGHT- fairy cakes are small and polite and non greedy, cup cakes are enormous and American, and VERY ANNOYING!!!!!!