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Rich Fruit Cup Cakes
1/4 cup Argo or Kingsford's Cornstarch. 2/3 cup Mazola 1 cup sugar 3 eggs 1/4 cup milk 1/2 teaspoon nutmeg 1/4 teaspoon salt 2 cups flour 1/4 cup Argo or Kingsford's Cornstarch 3 teaspoons baking powder 1/4 cup each halved, moist raisins, currants and shredded citron Pour the Mazola in a mixing bowl, add the sugar, nutmeg and the eggs. Stir till creamy; add the milk, and then the cornstarch, flour, salt and baking powder sifted together, mixed with the fruit. Transfer to cup cake pans oiled with Mazola and bake in a moderate oven, 350 to 375 degrees F. about twenty-five minutes.
A plain oil-based cupcake batter from a corn products promotional booklet; the cornstarch replacing part of the flour is the point of it, softening the crumb the way cake flour would.
- Mazola is corn oilAny neutral vegetable oil works in the same quantity. Because the fat is liquid there is no creaming of a solid fat to build air; the recipe's "stir till creamy" describes the texture of the oil, sugar and eggs rather than an aerating step, and the lift comes largely from the baking powder.
- Mix brieflyStir the oil, sugar, nutmeg and eggs only until smooth and pale, then fold the dry ingredients in just until no flour shows. Oil cakes turn tough and tunnelled if the batter is worked after the flour goes in.
- Cornstarch substitutionThe 2 cups flour plus 1/4 cup cornstarch mimics a soft cake flour. If you use cake flour instead, drop the cornstarch and use 2 1/4 cups total.
- Baking powderThree teaspoons for 2 1/4 cups of dry ingredients is at the high end by modern standards; 2 1/2 teaspoons of modern double-acting powder gives a cleaner flavour.
- Toss the fruit in the dry mixThe recipe folds the raisins, currants and citron into the sifted flour rather than the batter — this keeps them suspended instead of sinking. Do not skip it.
- CitronCandied citron peel, sold near the glacé fruit at holidays or from baking suppliers. Candied orange or lemon peel is the closest stand-in; "moist raisins" simply means plump, so soak dry ones in hot water and drain well.
- Oven and pans350°F is reliable for cupcakes; the upper end of the range is for a fast, dark crust. Use paper liners or oil the tins as directed, filling two-thirds full.
- YieldAbout 18 standard cupcakes. They are done when a skewer comes out clean, around 20 to 25 minutes — check at 20, since the fruit sugars colour the tops early.
This comes from one of the promotional cookbooks issued by the Corn Products Refining Company in the early twentieth century, which is why three brand names — Mazola oil, Argo cornstarch, Kingsford's cornstarch — appear in a nine-line recipe. Mazola was introduced in 1911 as a refined corn oil for cooking and baking, and booklets like this one existed to persuade cooks that a liquid vegetable fat could stand in for butter and lard in cakes, pastry and frying. The cake itself is a conservative choice for that argument: a lightly spiced fruit cupcake of the kind that would have appeared at a supper table or with tea, close in composition to the "cup cakes" of nineteenth-century American manuscript books, whose name is often traced to measuring ingredients by the cupful, though baking in cups is also attested as the source. The cornstarch is doing double duty here, softening the crumb and putting a second company product into the ingredient list.