298030 Tue Aug 03 21:28:11 -0700 2004 8 27 General Chowhounding Topics 0 1646586 I don't see a whole lot of difference between cupcakes and muffins - both are often loaded with sugar and butter. Aside from rubbery low-fat bran muffins, most muffins seem like cupcakes without icing. I'd like to bake and freeze a batch of breakfast muffins, but the last thing I want to do is eat dessert first thing in the morning. What makes a muffin a muffin? Thank you for any input. Cheers, Scotty Unbeamed Tue Aug 03 21:28:11 -0700 2004 0 Scotty Unbeamed 1 1646591 Well, lack of frosting would be a big one. I'm not positive about this, but I would imagine that years ago, muffins were considerably less sweet than they sometimes are now. They usually were simple with maybe a blueberries or apple chunks but probably never included chocolate and some of the other cupcakey things now found in muffins. Also, muffins often have nuts -- cupcakes traditionally don't. But you're right, with Americans' seemingly ever-increasing taste for sugar, they've become more interchangeable. So for your breakfast muffins, go for a recipe with a good mix of fruits, nuts and grains, and go easy on the sweeteners. Tue Aug 03 21:47:55 -0700 2004 1646586 0 Chowpatty 2 1646619 I think the above post is on the money. To expand upon it a bit, it seems that muffins are a subset of "bread" - specifically, quick breads - while cupcakes are a subset of "cakes." The key difference here is that, I think, cakes tend to be more on the moist side and to rise less. Breads will generally have more of a discernable "crumb" and can be either sweet or savory. Cupcakes are baked in muffin tins so one could argue that they are also a subset of "muffins" ... muffins seem to be the broader category, encompassing English muffins as well, which are an entirely different beast. Check the link below for more formal definitions of both. Link: http://eat.epicurious.com/dictionary/food/ Wed Aug 04 10:20:23 -0700 2004 1646591 0 rien 1 1646625 Well, as a friend used to say, "I'm glad they invented the word 'muffin,' because I would hate to say I'm having cake for breakfast." Muffins used to be less sweet - much less sweet, in fact. As a child, we used to have muffins with dinner a lot - plain muffins, which were not sweetened. Sometimes they had shredded cheese in them. I think the recipe is the basic muffin recipe in the old Fannie Farmer cookbook. The texture was more dense and crumbly than today's muffins. Berry muffins were for breakfast, and the same basic recipe was followed, with just a little sugar added. We also frequently had my grandmother's bran muffins, which were sweetened with a whole two tablespoons of molasses. This was not a long time ago, by the way. I'm only 32. My mother still kept a fairly traditional New England kitchen though - certain foods on certain days, almost no spices, lots of quickbreads like biscuits, popovers, muffins. Most older recipes for muffins call for melting butter or using oil, just like in a quick bread. The lift comes from baking powder or soda or both, and they are not extremely light. Cakes normally incorporate air into the butter or the eggs or both, as well as sometimes using a leavener. Though there are some dense cakes, most are lighter than muffins used to be. But muffins keep getting cakier and cakier in crumb and, of course, method to acheive that crumb. I've seen muffin recipes that require creaming the butter, etc. As far as I'm concerned, these are just unfrosted cakes - and the level of sugar is very, very high. (Corn muffins, in particular, have gotten almost weirdly sweet - people used to just throw Northern-style cornbread batter into muffin tins.) If you want a more nutritious muffin, I suggest you check some old cookbooks. You should be able to find one or two basic recipes that can be easily adapted by added nuts, fruit, etc as you wish. Even cheese. Wed Aug 04 11:21:04 -0700 2004 1646586 0 curiousbaker 2 1646666 Oh, my, Fannie Farmer's plain muffins, hot out of the oven, are utterly, utterly delicious. One of the first things I ever learned how to bake. They're still breakfast-sweet, but you could decrease the sugar (the recipe tells you how to adapt it to be more or less buttery, which is part of why it was a good one to learn on) and have a lovely alternative to corn muffins for dinner with, say, turkey chili. Wed Aug 04 15:34:41 -0700 2004 1646625 0 Sarah W-R 2 1646717 I think the technical distinction would be in the mixing method you mention. Muffins are made by mixing the wet ingredients, including liquid fat, into the dry ingredients. Cupcakes are made by creaming butter and sugar and adding the dry ingredients alternatley with the liquid. Obviously, this is a big generalization = Especially becuas there are so many kinds of cakes, including oil cakes. This is also an American definition. In Britain, I believe muffins are crumpets or something similar. Womder what they would call our muffin over there? If muffins seem more and more like cakes, it's because they are. Most commercial muffins are made by creaming together huge quantities of sugar and hydrogenated vegetable shortening. Thu Aug 05 01:09:11 -0700 2004 1646625 0 Cathleen 3 1646741 In England, the kind of muffins we are discussing here are called "American muffins." They also call our big, soft, Mrs. Field's-style cookies "cookies," whereas the sweet crunchy disks they eat with tea, e.g. ginger snaps, are of course "biscuits." Thu Aug 05 12:13:36 -0700 2004 1646717 0 Sarah W-R 1 1646653 I agree that most commercial muffins are cake-like at best and revolting at worst. When I bake muffins I use my favorite healthy quick bread recipes and just bake in a muffin pan. Last week I made whole wheat banana flaxmeal muffins with blueberries that were delicious and very nutritious. It was based on the recipe for flaxseed banana bread in "Moosewood Restaurant New Classics." I also make pumpkin, zucchini, bran (not overly sweet), etc. I always use whole wheat pastry flour, canola oil for the shortening and reduce the amount of sugar by about 25% Cake? Definitely not! But my kids love these, especially when I make the mini size. Wed Aug 04 14:22:07 -0700 2004 1646586 0 Buttercup 1 1646746 Here's a bit of reading on the subject :-) Link: http://www.dianasdesserts.com/index.cfm/fuseaction/bakingtips.Muffins/Muffins.cfm Thu Aug 05 12:50:39 -0700 2004 1646586 0 sourdoughbreath