The cupcake, by the earliest description was in 1796, in “American Cookery”, by Amelia Simmons.  The actual word “cupcake” didn’t truly come about until 1828, named by Eliza Leslie.  She published a cookbook called “Receipts” and brought the name to life.  During the time when she wrote this book, measuring cups hadn’t been invented yet, so any type of measurement was written as “1 teacup”, which is now equivalent to 1 cup in our time.  Thus, the name cupcake was born, so to speak.