I love historical desserts – especially those with an interesting story or those that I may never have heard of before. So, of course, I was super excited to read Jessie Sheehan’s new cookbook, The Vintage Baker [paid link]. In its pages, I discovered cottage pudding.

Why had I never come across cottage pudding before? It sure sounded like vanilla cake from the description, so what made it different?

My newest contributor is Jess Touchette – she’s a librarian and she’ll be sharing well-researched stories of the desserts that you know and love.  I hope you enjoy her first contribution.

This is a blog for cupcake lovers, so I’m guessing that you (like me) have tried your share of Stef’s more than 200 cupcake recipes. But have you ever wondered how the full-sized model of those fluffy little bites of perfection (a.k.a., cake) came to be?