One of America's Favorites - the Muffin

Muffins

The term muffin typically refers to an individual sized quick bread product which can be sweet or savory. The typical American muffin is similar to a cupcake in size and cooking methods. These can come in both savory varieties, such as corn or cheese muffins, or sweet varieties such as blueberry or banana.

Muffin also refers to a flatter disk-shaped bread of English origin, commonly referred to as an English muffin outside the United Kingdom. These muffins are also popular in Commonwealth countries and the United States.







American Muffins

Recipes for quick bread muffins are common in 19th-century American cookbooks. Recipes for yeast-based muffins, which were sometimes called "common muffins" or "wheat muffins" in 19th-century American cookbooks, can be found in much older cookbooks. In her Boston Cooking-School Cook Book, Fannie Farmer gave recipes for both types of muffins, both those that used yeast to raise the dough and those that used a quick bread method, using muffin rings to shape the English muffins. Farmer indicated that stove top "baking", as is done with yeast dough, was a useful method when baking in an oven was not practical.

English Muffins

English muffin

The English muffin is a type of yeast-leavened bread; generally about 4 in (10 cm) round and 1.5 in (3.8 cm) tall. Rather than being oven-baked, they are cooked in a griddle on the stove top and flipped from side-to-side, which results in their typical flattened shape rather than the rounded top seen in baked rolls or cake-type muffins.

History
The name is first found in print in 1703, spelled moofin; it is of uncertain origin but possibly derived from the Low German Muffin, the plural of Muffe meaning a small cake, or possibly with some connection to the Old French moufflet meaning soft as said of bread.





Muffin cups

Muffin cups or cases are usually round sheets of paper, foil, or silicone with scallop-pressed edges, giving the muffin a round cup shape. They are used in the baking of muffins to line the bottoms of muffin tins, to facilitate the easy removal of the finished muffin from the tin.

A blueberry muffin in a paper muffin cup.

A variety of sizes for muffin cases are available. Slightly different sizes are considered "standard" in different countries. Miniature cases are commonly 1 to 1.25 in (25 to 32 mm) in diameter at the base and .75 in (19 mm) tall. Standard-size cases range from 1.75 to 2 millimeters (0.069 to 0.079 in) in diameter at the base and are 1.25 to 1.5 in (32 to 38 mm) tall. Some jumbo-size cases can hold more than twice the size of standard cases. Australian and Swedish bakers are accustomed to taller paper cases with a larger diameter at the top than American and British bakers.

The advantage to cooks is easier removal and cleanup, more precise form, and moister muffins; however, using them will prevent a crust from forming.