Muffins in Britain?

Oct. 2nd, 2010 at 10:41 PM

Hey guys!

Do they have muffins in the UK? Or is that a North American thing?

Odd questions are odd, I know, but there ARE reasons I need to know this...

Current Mood: nervous

Comments

( 29 comments — Leave a comment )

claudiapriscus

Oct. 3rd, 2010 06:13 am (UTC)

I...think so. I'm not much of a muffin fan, so I never ate them. An now I can't quite remember.

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hells_half_acre

Oct. 3rd, 2010 06:22 am (UTC)

Well that's...really not much help :P

I sort of need to know for certain! But thanks anyway!

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claudiapriscus

Oct. 3rd, 2010 06:30 am (UTC)

I know, I know, sorry! I started to answer, and then...I realized I wasn't sure. Well, there's an easy way to solve it, so I went to Tesco's website and found muffins. SO the answer seems to be yes, because you can buy them at Tesco and they've got some variety, too.

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hells_half_acre

Oct. 3rd, 2010 06:32 am (UTC)

Alright! I guess that's good enough for me :)

I don't really want to rewrite everything I just wrote anyway...so, yeah, the UK has muffins whether it likes them or not ;)

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kaybee751

Oct. 3rd, 2010 06:37 am (UTC)

According to the in-house ex-pat: in England, a muffin is what we call an English muffin. What we call a muffin, they call either a Queen cake or an American muffin. They have these, but they're not common.

Wikipedia backs up all of this except the Queen cake thing. A Google search of Queen cakes was ambiguous, so I'd favour "American muffin" if trying to make it clear to an English person.

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hells_half_acre

Oct. 3rd, 2010 06:40 am (UTC)

Thanks! English muffins! I forgot about those!

Since it doesn't really matter what "muffin" refers to, only that an English person would know and use that word for SOMETHING...it means that I don't have to rewrite what I just wrote! Yay!

Thank the in-house ex-pat for me ;)

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elsewhere_kels

Oct. 3rd, 2010 06:48 am (UTC)

Upon looking up this question on google, I found a message board where the question was posed. The people on there who said they came from Britain claimed that wikipedia is on crack (though not exactly in those words) and that "English muffins" are actually pretty rare in England and that they're like how "French fries" aren't actually french. But they DID say they had american muffins or "little cakes", though they weren't really ever eaten for breakfast.

(This obviously doesn't change the fact that you don't need to rewrite your scene, so I don't know why I'm telling you, just for information's sake, I guess =D)

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claudiapriscus

Oct. 3rd, 2010 07:14 am (UTC)

I never saw english muffins when I lived in the UK, so I'm inclined to think that messageboard is right.

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hells_half_acre

Oct. 3rd, 2010 07:37 am (UTC)

Knowledge is power!

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duowolf

Oct. 3rd, 2010 07:50 am (UTC)

If this is what you mean by a muffin :

Then yes you can get them in the UK.

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hells_half_acre

Oct. 3rd, 2010 07:51 am (UTC)

Thanks!

I guess I should have been clearer...what I really needed to know was whether the word "muffin" was used regularly in the UK. Not so much about muffins themselves.

That being said...it's good to know that if I go to the UK, I can still get delicious muffins.

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risenshine22

Oct. 3rd, 2010 08:27 am (UTC)

this is probably not much help, but around 10 years ago there was a big muffin hype in Germany. Since then you can buy the molds (or whatever you call them), the paper things you put them in, books on how to bake them and of course the muffins too. When there's a party and everyone has to bring a cake or a salad, there has to be at least one person bringing muffins - with those colorful chocolate things on top!

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hells_half_acre

Oct. 3rd, 2010 09:11 am (UTC)

That IS a help, actually...because it means people in Europe are familiar with muffins. :)

Also, around 8 years ago, I was living in Germany...and that's where I bought the muffin tins (molds) that I still use to this day!

Thanks!

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risenshine22

Oct. 3rd, 2010 09:51 am (UTC)

NICE icon!! Today's Day of German Unity! :D

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hells_half_acre

Oct. 3rd, 2010 09:54 am (UTC)

I thought you might like it ;)

Happy German Unity Day! :)

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mara_snh

Oct. 3rd, 2010 04:18 pm (UTC)

That sounds more like cupcakes to me than muffins. Muffins can be sweet, like lemon poppyseed ones or carrot cake ones or whatever, but they never have icing or "colorful chocolate things" (jimmies) on top. Cupcakes are basically the same as layer cakes, only cooked in muffin tins with paper liners.

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hells_half_acre

Oct. 3rd, 2010 07:59 pm (UTC)

Perhaps, perhaps, but the important thing is that she used the word "muffin" - as I said in a previous comment, it's not so much what "muffin" refers to that I need to know - just that they use the word.

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risenshine22

Oct. 3rd, 2010 11:48 pm (UTC)

In Germany we don't have a special word for cup cakes - here it's all muffins, just because of its size. When I was a kid I didn't know that you can bake cakes that small!

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hells_half_acre

Oct. 4th, 2010 01:40 am (UTC)

Here we even have smaller muffin tins, that allow you to make what my sister and I call "mini-muffins"...they make you feel like a giant when eating them.

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mara_snh

Oct. 4th, 2010 02:16 am (UTC)

Really? I didn't know that, and it interests me because my maternal ancestors were bakers/pastry chefs in Alsace-Lorraine, which as you probably know has been a blend of French and German cultures for centuries. My grandmother used to joke that great-grandfather (the one who brought his skills to the U.S.) specialized in "patisserie mit schlag." He probably made some kind of what we call cupcakes. What would the German word for "muffin" be? That's what he would have called them, probably, right?

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risenshine22

Oct. 4th, 2010 06:00 am (UTC)

I can't remember seeing anything like a cup cake at the baker when I grew up. We had a lot of things called "Süße Stücke" - sweet pieces. They came in a lot forms usually with poppyseeds, jelly or fruit inside, look here: http://www.landbaeckerei-tauberschmidt.de/images/Fein/fein1.jpg
You're great-grandfather maybe did those things here, called "Windbeutel" (that's not a usual cake, more like an empty bag thing) http://www.kuchenstube.de/Bilder/Kuchen/Windbeutel-g.jpg

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mara_snh

Oct. 5th, 2010 12:43 am (UTC)

Ooh, thank you! This helps me visualize my heritage in a most delightful way :-)

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akadougal

Oct. 3rd, 2010 09:29 am (UTC)

Yes. Lots of them. I eat lots of them too. Not so much toasted English ones but sweet delicious cake ones.

Muffin also has dodgy connotations if you have a filthy mind too.

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hells_half_acre

Oct. 3rd, 2010 09:30 am (UTC)

Muffin also has dodgy connotations if you have a filthy mind too.

Oh really?! This will make the scene even more hilarious! Awesome.

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mara_snh

Oct. 3rd, 2010 04:21 pm (UTC)

Excuse me?!? LOL Can't imagine what you mean by that. "Muffin" is a fairly comon nickname for a cute little girl. Unfortunately, a lot of cute little girls grow up with the nickname intact well into their 80s. It kind of goes with sweater sets and pearls. It's often rendered, however, as "Muffy."

Now I do understand that "muff" might have the suggestive character you're referring to (to whit, muff-diving, et a;.), but let's let muffin (and her dear friend Muffy) remain pure and dignified, shall we? Ahem!

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hells_half_acre

Oct. 3rd, 2010 08:00 pm (UTC)

Sadly, your intervention is probably too late on this one :P

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akadougal

Oct. 3rd, 2010 08:37 pm (UTC)

Loving your work. Muffy! I'm afraid the innuendo just doesn't stop. Muffin? Pure?

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