Growing up in the UK in the sixties, I never had a cupcake.
Our special occasion treat was fairy cakes – little portions of Victoria sponge in a small, plain white, paper bun case.
Decoration was always low-key. Remove a slice from the top, put in a teensy-tiny amount of butter-cream, cut the leftover sponge into two portions and reinsert them so they looked vaguely like butterfly wings.
On school fetes and birthdays you might get the added treat of a little bit of icing with – such luxury – hundreds and thousands or even jelly tots!
Now the fairy cake has been replaced with an American intruder – the cupcake.
Less delicate, a little fancier and frosted to within an inch of its life.
Cupcake or muffin – what’s the difference?
Well that’s open to debate.
Some say cupcakes are named because they were traditionally baked in a cup. Others say it refers to the American way of measuring ingredients, in cups.
Some suggest it’s all down to size and others get technical with the ingredients and methods of combining them.
So let’s put the argument to rest with our own definition.
Cupcake or muffin – Rosemary and Pork Belly’s 5 step process
1. If it is smothered with frosting it is a cupcake
2. If it has a simple icing sugar dusting or glaze it is a muffin
3. If it has bits of things in the mix (chocolate chips, fruit etc) it is a muffin
4. If you can face it at breakfast time it is a muffin
5. If it is a tiny, fiddly little thing that you can swallow in one mouthful it is neither muffin nor cupcake, but the long-lost fairy cake.
Simple isn’t it?
Whatever you call it, the trick is the same – to make sure the actual mix is light, moist and sufficiently well flavoured to offset the potentially overpowering sweetness of any topping.
Happy baking!
Header image: GLady/pixabay
Feature image: RitaE/Pixabay
Where to next?
• Banana, rum and raisin muffins
• Coconut cookies
• Agnes B Marshall, ice-cream pioneer