Mikey D

Jim Gaffigan, in his comedy routine, jokes, "Sometimes we try and disguise the fact that we're eating cake. 'It's breakfast, I can't have cake...I'll have a muffin!' You know the difference between a cake and a muffin? Nothing! A muffin is a bald cupcake. And we know it!"

You know why it's funny? It's funny because it's true!

The past couple of days I have been trying to tell everyone that will listen (including our waiter at Chili's) that muffins are indeed a type of cake, and not just a bread. But no matter how hard I try to convince people with my extremely valid points, they still believe that a muffin is just another type of bread. Today I will lay it out for you, fact by fact, so there is only hard evidence for you to look at. Today you all will see that a muffin is more a cake than a bread, and when the next time a person asks you, 'Is a muffin cake or bread?', your answer will be a resounding, 'CAKE!'

To start, let's look at three similar recipes. I have chosen to look at lemon cake, lemon muffin, and lemon bread recipes. For this part I want to show people that a muffin can be BOTH a cake and a bread at the same time. There are instances in which this occurs. Here is one:

Lemon Cake: (http://www.cooks.com/rec/doc/0,166,136189-244196,00.html)
4 eggs
2 1/2 cups of sugar
3/4 cup of lemon juice
2 tsp grated lemon
3 cups flour
1/2 pound of butter
1 tsp salt
1/2 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp baking soda
3/4 cup buttermilk
1 tsp vanilla extract

Lemon Bread (http://www.cooks.com/rec/doc/0,184,145169-236201,00.html)
2 eggs
1 cup of sugar
grated rind of 1 lemon
1/2 cup milk
1 1/2 cup flour
dash of salt
1 tsp baking powder
Icing: Juice from 1 lemon, 1/2 cup sugar

Lemon Muffins (http://www.cooks.com/rec/doc/0,184,151175-239204,00.html):
3 eggs
1 cup of sugar
1/4 lemon juice
1 peel of lemon
2 cups of flour
1/2 cup butter
1/2 tsp salt
1 tsp baking powder
1/4 tsp almond extract

If we begin to look at the ingredients we can see that all three recipes have very much in common. They all share these common ingredients: Eggs, sugar, lemon juice, lemon zest/peel, flour, butter, salt, and baking powder. Whats more, the cake and bread recipes are practically identical, and the only difference between them and the muffin recipe is essentially less than a cup of milk. From this I am going to conclude that a muffin can be, at times, both a cake and a bread, based on the ingredients found in both. (The arguement could also be made that cake is bread at times, but let's save that one for a rainy day.)

I'm arguing, however, that a muffin is more a cake than a bread. For this I feel we need to look at three different random (non-similar) recipes and compare them. By doing this we will see what ingredients are shared and hopefully we can make a better comparison as to which is more similar. Will three non-similar recipes show that a muffin has more in common with cake or bread? I have chosen, at random, three recipes by typing in 'cake recipes', 'muffin recipes', and 'bread recipes' on my web browser's home page and choosing the first recipe that came up. Here are the recipes for each:

Strawberry Shortcake (http://allrecipes.com/Recipe/Strawberry-Shortcake/Detail.aspx):
3 pints fresh strawberries
1/2 cup white sugar
2 1/4 cups all-purpose flour
4 teaspoons baking powder
2 tablespoons white sugar
1/4 teaspoon salt
1/3 cup shortening
1 egg
2/3 cup milk
2 cups whipped heavy cream

Almond Muffins (http://www.muffinrecipes.net/almond-muffins.html)
1 medium egg
2 cups of flour
3/4 cup of milk
1/2 cup of almonds
1/2 cup of sugar
1/2 cup of oil
3 teaspoons of baking powder
1/2 teaspoon of almond extract
1/4 teaspoon of cinnamon
1/4 teaspoon of nutmeg
1/8 teaspoon of salt

Baxis White Bread (http://allrecipes.com/Recipe/Baxis-White-Bread/Detail.aspx)
1 1/2 teaspoons active dry yeast
2 cups bread flour
1 teaspoon salt
1 tablespoon white sugar
1 tablespoon dry milk powder
1 tablespoon butter, softened
3/4 cup water

Comparing the strawberry shortcake with the almond muffins first, we see that they share these common ingredients: eggs, flour, milk, sugar, salt, shortening/oil, and baking powder. Really the only difference in ingredients are each recipe's particular flavors, like strawberries and almonds. The fundamental ingredients are essentially the same!

When comparing the baxis white bread to the almond muffins, we see that they share these common ingredients: sugar, salt, and milk (dry milk+ water...basically the same as milk). The similarities in ingredients are far less, and the ingredients themselves are vastly different. In this bread recipe, the notable different ingredients are yeast and bread flour. In most breads it's common to find yeast and bread flour included, causing the bread to rise more than in a muffin or cake. In fact, it is discouraged to use bread flour in place of all-purpose flour when making cakes or muffins, as using, "bread flour in place of all-purpose will produce a tough, chewy, disappointing result." (http://www.ochef.com/97.htm) It is the yeasting agent that is found in bread that really supplies the fundamental difference between muffins/cake and bread.

The definition of each three terms, cake, muffin, and bread, even speaks of this difference:
Bread~"food made from dough of flour or meal and usually raised with yeast or baking powder and then baked."
Cake~"a sweet, baked, bread-like food, made with or without shortening, and usually containing flour, sugar, baking powder or soda, eggs, and liquid flavoring."
Muffin~"an individual cup-shaped quick bread made with wheat flour, cornmeal, or the like, and baked in a pan (muffin pan) containing a series of cup-like forms"
Which definitions are the most similar? Cake and muffins. Notice how in the definition of bread they speak of the yeast agent. And I know that you are already saying to me, "Mike, it says the words 'quick bread' in the definition, so it's obviously a type of bread!" Do you know the difference between quick bread and bread though? Bread uses a yeast to make the dough rise, while a quick bread uses chemical leaveners (baking soda and the such) to make the dough, "relatively uniform, reliable, and quick." (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quick_bread) Now, let me ask you, what else uses chemical leaveners instead of yeast to rise? That's right. Cake.

So when looking at three random recipes of cake, muffin, and bread, it is clear to see that the muffin has much more in common with cake than bread, because in essence a muffin is a miniature version of cake. And although there are times that a muffin can fit into both a bread and cake category, the muffin can always fit into the cake category. It's kind of like how a square is always a rectangle, but a rectangle is not always a square- to put it into mathematical terms. Because of this, I believe we need to get rid of the notion that a muffin is just a bread, when it is more cake than anything.

If you are not happy with the three random recipes I have chosen, pick three on your own. I have done multiple comparisons between the three, and have come up with the same results. There are times when the muffin is similar to both the cake and bread. There are also times when the muffin is similar just to the cake, and not the bread. Whichever examples you choose, you will see that the muffin is, to refer back to Jim Gaffigan, "a bald cupcake."

Even with all this information, I can still hear the naysayers...
"Well a muffin is more nutritionally healthy than cake." Not really. I'm not going to present all the data, but I encourage you to check out http://www.nutritiondata.com/. Of course you will find the cases where the nutritional data for a certain muffin are similar to both the bread and cake nutritional information, but on a whole, you will see that a muffin is more closely related nutritionally to cake. It's follows the same theory as I presented above, about how there are times when a muffin is like a bread, but always like cake.
"It's about the proportions of the ingredients." While it is true that a single muffin has less amounts of the common ingredients in an entire cake, I feel it is easy to say that if we were to make a "muffin cake" it would be quite similar nutritionally and proportionally in ingredients when compared to an entire cake.
"We don't eat muffins for dessert, we have them for breakfast, like toast." Yeah, but you know what? You could have a muffin for dessert, you just choose not to. I refer you to the Nutrition Action Healthletter (http://www.cspinet.org/nah/11_99/best_and_worst.html) where they talk about the best and worst breakfasts. There they refer to a muffin as, "nothing more than breakfast cake."

It is quite apparent in society today that the fact that people still consider all muffins bread is a widely popular misnomer. I'm sure, in some way, that it has played its part in our nation's obesity problem, as millions of people each morning think they are eating a nutritionally healthy "bread" item. This couldn't be further from the truth. I have showed you how and why a muffin is more cake than bread, and now it's up to you to accept this as fact. Get rid of your preconceived notions of muffins, and accept the fact that it's a type of cake. With this post I officially end my debating on this topic. Done and done.

~Mikey D