Top Of The Muffin TO YOU!
There is a fine damn line between a muffin and a cupcake. I just went down to our cafeteria and scored a low-fat chocolate "muffin" and was struck by the fact that it was basically a cupcake without frosting. That is to say it was delightful.
This makes me ask, when does a muffin cross over to becoming a cupcake? Is it merely the presence of frosting? I am inclined to think that's it, because they have the same ingredients, right? I don't bake, so I wouldn't know, but I asked some of the gals in the office and that was the consensus.
Calling something a "muffin" somehow makes it much easier to justify pyschologically as a snack item. I would be labeled a wanton slob were it known that I toddled down to the cafeteria and wolfed down a cupcake mid-morning, but a muffin...a muffin is perfectly normal. Hey, people eat muffins in the morning, don't they?
Consider the following hypothetical exchanges between co-workers:
Exchange A
Alice: Where's JB?
Sue: I think I saw him buying a muffin at the cafeteria
Alice: Okay, thanks
Exchange B
Alice: Where's JB?
Sue: (rolling eyes) I think I saw him buying a cupcake at the cafeteria
Alice: A cupcake? What is he, eight years old?
Sue: You'd think. Like he needs a cupcake anyway
Banana "bread". Same deal. It's freakin' banana cake mix put into a little "bread" pan, thus somehow making it okay to consume at all hours of the day. One of the dames in the office gave each of us a loaf of pistachio bread and I asked her what was in it. She replied that it was vanilla cake mix, loads of sugar and pistachio pudding.
The thing I love about calling these items "breads" is that it allows you license to further enhance the flavor by smothering the thing in butter--something you could not get away with to a piece of cake (although I imagine it would taste pretty damn good). Since, after all, it's "bread" and you put butter on bread.
Just imagine having a nice moist hunk of german chocolate cake and then busting out a knife and slathering it down with I Can't Believe It Aint Butter. Now add a cold glass of milk. Mmmmm...
Now if I could only get people to think that my 3:00 Baby Ruth was actually some kind of Power Bar or something.
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