My friend Nancy (creator and editor of the excellent sandwich blog Between the Bread) recently sent me this photo of a muffin I baked and gave her one morning soon after hearing that she'd gotten engaged. Mostly I wanted to just post this photo because I think it's cute, despite the fact that it's a muffin and not a cupcake. But then I started thinking . . . what's the difference between muffins and cupcakes?
It might seem like an obvious distinction to some people — cupcakes have frosting, muffins do not. However! In the above photo, a lemon poppy-seed muffin has been drizzled with a sugary glaze. It's maybe not frosting, per se, but it is a kind of icing.
In doing some cursory Internet research on the subject, it appears that in addition to the "frosting vs. no frosting" debate, many folks also point out that muffins are cups of baked bread and are intended as a breakfast food, while cupcakes are far sweeter and are used as desserts. And yet, over on the blog Cake Spy, they conducted a whole experiment about this question and found that the recipes they used for the cupcakes and the muffins each called for the same amount of sugar! That is, however, only in the cupcakes themselves and doesn't count the sugar in frosting.
The editors at Cupcakes Take the Cake decided that it wasn't the amount of sugar but rather the ratios of fat, sugar and eggs:
The quick-and-dirty answer on this is that cupcakes have frosting, whereas muffins do not. However, in researching, I found an excellent formulaic definition of the difference courtesy of Diana's Desserts: "A basic formula for muffins is 2 cups flour, 2-4 tablespoons sugar, 2½ teaspoons baking powder, ½ teaspoon salt, 1 egg, ¼ cup oil, shortening or butter and 1 cup milk. When the fat, sugar and egg ratio in a recipe reaches double or more than this, you have reached the cake level."
I know which one I'd prefer on any given day, but which do you enjoy more: Cupcakes or muffins?
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