What's the difference between a cupcake and a muffin?

Question

I was debating with someone today whether what we were eating was a cupcake or a muffin, but realized we didn't really know the difference. So what's the difference between a cupcake and a muffin in American English?

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In case you're wondering, what we were eating had a sweet batter, but not overly; had blueberries in the batter; had no icing or frosting; was perhaps about three fluid ounces (1 dL) big; and had been baked with a paper wrapper.

Answer 1

There is considerable overlap between cupcakes and muffins.

Method

From a technical point of view, muffins are made by the muffin method, making them small quickbreads. In the muffin method, the wet ingredients are combined in one bowl; and the dry ingredients are combined in another bowl. Then the two are quickly incorporated together with minimal mixing to avoid gluten development. This gives muffins a somewhat coarse crumb.

Cupcakes are small cakes, and are made by one of the traditional cake methods such as the creaming method, the reverse creaming method, the genoise method, the chiffon method, and so on. They tend to have a finer crumb than muffins.

Contrast

While no single criterion distinguishes a muffin from a cupcake if you do not adopt the technical definition above, the following trends exist:

• Cupcakes tend to be sweeter than muffins; there are savory muffins such as cornbread
• Cupcakes are often iced or frosted, whereas muffins tend to have no topping, or a simple crumb topping
• Cupcakes usually have a head or top no larger than the body of the cupcake; muffins are often encouraged to overflow their baking cup, so that their top is larger in diameter, giving them somewhat of a mushroom shape
• Cupcakes are almost always, well, cupcake shaped; muffins can be made as just muffin tops
• Cupcakes are almost never crispy or crunchy; muffins are often encouraged to brown and develop texture, especially on the tops

Answer 2

And cupcakes always have frosting.

For me, that's actually the real defining feature: frosting. A drizzle of glaze is one thing, but once you put frosting on a muffin, it's no longer a muffin in our mind. Hey, you have to draw the line somewhere!

Answer 3

Due to thekitchn website the difference between muffins and cupcakes is the following:

A muffin is something that's relatively healthy. It's not too sweet, perhaps made with whole wheat flour, and is more likely to be loaded with fruit than candy (ex: Blueberries). A muffin can also be savory instead of sweet. The texture is usually dryer and slightly denser than their cupcake cousins.

Cupcakes are, well, miniature cakes. They're sweet by definition, coming in flavors like vanilla, chocolate, and red velvet. A cupcake is tender and rich with eggs and butter. They're a dessert item, not an everyday breakfast food. And cupcakes always have frosting.

Another definition of muffins due to Diana’s Desserts is:

'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.'

Due to the preceding formulas, we can deduce that the muffin is lighter and healthier than a cupcake by having less fats (butter and milk), less eggs and sometimes whole wheat or oats instead of normal flour.

Answer 4

I took some time to compare cupcakes and muffins with each other and I listed all the differences in a convenient chart on my blog:

https://backdirndl4you.wordpress.com/2015/01/19/muffin-vs-cupcake/

Have a baketastic baking day,

Answer 5

Hehe, exactly as much different as biscuits and cookies , if you know what I mean. Them "Americans" just created a new term out from their Brit Ancestors, like this cookie from biscuit thing, that's all. YES THAT'S ALL! Whatever tiny toony differences people are trying to show off are tiniest to the power tiniest made up just for the sake of the subject....