A rose by any other name...

The other day my banker had a pastry question for me. He and his colleagues had been discussing the difference between muffins and cupcakes. “What is the difference?” he asked.

After a fairly long and expectant pause I answered, “Frosting.” “Oh, no,” he responded, “we’ve actually had muffins with icing on them.”

In a perfect world this would be an easy question to answer. Muffins are more or less quick breads in cup forms, should have healthy things like bananas and bran in them, and be suitable for breakfast. Cupcakes are pretty much cake in cup form, should have sweet things like chocolate and vanilla in them, and be suitable for birthday parties.

As I checked through these things in my head before answering, I realized that Americans put n’importe quoi* in their foods, completely obscuring all delineations. Haven’t we all had cake as dense as bread and bread as light as cake? Take Carrot Cake and Carrot Muffins, for example. Maybe throw some nuts in the muffin? And definitely put icing on the cake. But what if you didn’t? What is the difference? And then there’s the epitome of absurdity – chocolate muffins. Maybe somebody is fooled by that misnomer, but certainly not me!

All that to say, this morning I made a pancake recipe into muffins. But they were too light, so it must have been cake, but there wasn’t any sugar, so, huh, what was it? It was breakfast.

Ah, a rose by any other name….

*Any old thing, usually done to suit a fancy, to be difficult, or out of stupidity. Said in exasperation.