Muffins vs. Cupcakes.

This question is apparently a very hot-button debate topic on the internet, so I'm going to jump into the fray.

Just what is the difference between a muffin and cupcake?

Many people give the simple answer that a cupcake has frosting and a muffin does not. I don't really like that answer since I don't think that wearing a hat changes who you are, and neither should the topping of a baked good change its identity. If I put on a chef hat, I'm still probably going to burn your roast, even if I speak with a fancy french accent and pretend to know what I'm doing.

(to clarify on that, I love to bake, and I'm relatively good at it, but I am an abysmal cook. I'm trying to learn, but I just don't enjoy it like I do baking.)

So I put the question out there to my friends on facebook and got a variety of responses.

One poster claimed that muffins have the option of having a "healthy" component such as fruit or bran or seeds, whereas cupcakes do not. The apple cinnamon cupcakes I'll be posting in a few days disagree with that though, and leaves me wondering what the difference between a chocolate muffin and a chocolate cupcake are.

There is argument that cupcakes are "lighter" and "airier" in texture than muffins, similar to the comparison between cake and quick-breads like banana bread or zucchini bread. My favorite way of explaining this (as gleaned from internet "research" was that when you throw a cupcake against a wall it will make a "thud" sound, whereas a cupcake should be more of a "poof". That theory was blown out of the water, however, when my brother's girlfriend brought up pound cake, and consequently, pound cupcakes. Those definitely fall in the "dense" catagory! I'm pretty sure they're  more dense than most of my muffins, actually.

On the more scientific side, I got the following formula:
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.

...Which puts my banana muffins firmly in the "cake" catagory. Uh oh. And my mom's amazing banana bread is definitely banana cake. And the best cornbread I've ever tasted at the pub I used to to work at is now corn-cake... 
And I'm still a little confused as to the proportions therein. Do you need to double ALL of those ingredients (fat, sugar AND egg) or just one of them? What about low-fat cake? (I know, blasphemous) I'm finding too many exception to the rules!


And then my dear friend Samantha gave the answer that laid the question to rest. 


"I do not think that frosting identifies cup cakes as they can be with out frosting and still be cupcakes. Maybe back in the day muffins were more "bready" and cup cakes were more "cake-like", but that is not true in this day of age. Muffins... can have just as much sugar and fat as cupcakes and be called "muffins". I think it is more like art. If someone calls something "art" (no madder how weird/obscure it is) it becomes art. If we call it a "muffin" or "cupcake" that is what it. Purely because someone says so. It is just a name. It's like compairing fuschia and hot pink. You can argue over the differences but really in the end they are both pink."

Cupcakes as art. I love it.