Wednesday
21Jan2009
Cupcake Muffin Showdown
Wednesday, January 21, 2009 at 11:20PM
After blithely making the statement:
it occurred to me that this might be an interesting challenge. I know my reasons: cupcakes are a transportation mechanism for frosting, and I'm not that big of a fan of frosting. Muffins are more versatile. Muffins taste better. Muffins are easier to make. Muffins have better texture. Muffins are potentially healthier. Muffins, I decided, are better.
However, I know that many of my friends on Twitter are cupcake fans. There has been much activity over the past several months about cupcakes. Perhaps they would disagree.
So far: not so much. I've gotten a bunch of, "Yay muffins!" responses, and some, "both are good, really," responses, but no one claiming to be the champion of the cupcake. In retrospect, this is disappoint, because I want to issue a challenge: to determine the ultimate winner of cupcake v. muffin.
If I can get enough people on each side to claim there's superiority, then I will host a series of contests for specific challenges. There will be prizes. Good prizes. Not necessarily expensive prizes, but good even so. If not, then muffins are clearly the winner, and I'll have to find real controversy somewhere.
To state your claim, send me a @reply on twitter (@thefoodgeek or @thefoodgeek_com), or comment here. Pass around tweets and retweets to point people here. Let's find out the true the scientific way. Or, in a pinch, a way vaguely resembling the scientific way.
it occurred to me that this might be an interesting challenge. I know my reasons: cupcakes are a transportation mechanism for frosting, and I'm not that big of a fan of frosting. Muffins are more versatile. Muffins taste better. Muffins are easier to make. Muffins have better texture. Muffins are potentially healthier. Muffins, I decided, are better.
However, I know that many of my friends on Twitter are cupcake fans. There has been much activity over the past several months about cupcakes. Perhaps they would disagree.
So far: not so much. I've gotten a bunch of, "Yay muffins!" responses, and some, "both are good, really," responses, but no one claiming to be the champion of the cupcake. In retrospect, this is disappoint, because I want to issue a challenge: to determine the ultimate winner of cupcake v. muffin.
If I can get enough people on each side to claim there's superiority, then I will host a series of contests for specific challenges. There will be prizes. Good prizes. Not necessarily expensive prizes, but good even so. If not, then muffins are clearly the winner, and I'll have to find real controversy somewhere.
To state your claim, send me a @reply on twitter (@thefoodgeek or @thefoodgeek_com), or comment here. Pass around tweets and retweets to point people here. Let's find out the true the scientific way. Or, in a pinch, a way vaguely resembling the scientific way.
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Reader Comments (4)
One small point of disagreement with your premise...Cupcakes are NOT necessarily a conveyance for icing/frosting. Personally, I don't like icing and don't put it on my cupcakes unless forced by others. I love a nice, warm, fluffy german chocolate cupcake plain - maybe even two with an afternoon tea. Or carrot and spice cupcakes. MMMMMmmm...
Ok, so I have two points..."muffins" are not necessarily healthier. I have seen many oversized "muffins" that seem clearly to be made of dense cake batter and are loaded with more refined sugar substances (chocolate chips, icing, etc.) than any cupcake I make.
So, to push the geek limits here, why don't we define "muffin" vs "cupcake" so that our definition are consistent? That being the case, I would vote for a honey-wheat muffin with strawberries (a fave) over a cupcake, any day.
Certainly, cupcakes are nice enough - delighting us in the moment, but leaving one with a mild sense of dis-ease: "All that sugar, that luscious, deadly buttercream, and for what? How have I emerged a better eater?" The lingering sugar on the tongue turns to bitterness. We trudge off to the treadmill.
Muffins, on the other hand, satiate the sweet tooth and leave no such regrets. In the introspective aftermath, we observe, "The sugar . . . but lo, there were nuts. There were cranberries, perhaps carrots, at very least blueberries. The phytonutrients, the omega-3s, the fiber!" The unsurpassed joy of serendipitous nutrients!
Muffins, clearly, win the day.
I'm one of those, "How about both?" folks, simply because I see one as a dessert, and one as breakfast. They're not in the same competition class...
Cupcake lover, here. I haven't touched muffins in years, ever since I found out that my "healthy" bran muffin had the equivalent fat and calories of a cheeseburger, but with less nutrients. Muffins are deceptive-- they lie, they cheat. Of course, they sometimes bring you flowers, sure, but you can tell they picked them up at a gas station as an afterthought. Cupcakes don't pretend to be healthy or make claims about cholesterol. And they offer unconditional love! And frosting! Now a question-- if I bake carrot cake batter in a muffin/cupcake tin, have I made carrot muffins or carrot cupcakes? Does it make a difference if I frost them?