I like making muffins. This entire journey began 6 years ago, when I had to lose weight to qualify for transplant. I looked at breakfast items I could have, which included one muffin at 150 calories. There are no commercial muffins made for 150 calories. This led me to make my own, at first using a set of recipes my wife had. I had never baked anything before, and I was querulous and foul-mouthed as she guided me through acts then unfamiliar to me- sifting, mixing, pouring. And, 15 minutes later, I had made food out of inedible raw ingredients. It is still a thrill. In the interim I have made my own recipes and learned how batters work, and how they are different from doughs.
A batter is a mixture that rises by use of baking powder and/or baking soda. This includes quick breads, waffles, scones, muffins, cakes and biscuits. The difference between these entities is their ingredients and how they are beaten. A biscuit is American mille feuille pastry. Instead of layers of ultra thin dough buttered, stacked and folded, a biscuit has the shortening, used ice cold, cut into flour until crumbs are made. This is mixed and then folded repeatedly. The folding traps air, making the biscuit pop up in the familiar flaky pattern. In contrast, muffins are just barely mixed, as beating makes them tough, while a cake is beaten heavily with multiple eggs until smooth.
The other big difference is the amount of eggs, oil and sugar. A biscuit has almost no sweetener, a muffin has a little up to about 1/2 cup, and a cake has 1+ cups of sugar. A biscuit uses 1/3C butter or shortening, muffins 1/4 cup and cakes 1 cup of oil. Biscuits have no eggs, muffins one and cakes two to four. My muffin recipes have 2C flour, 1C milk, 1/2C sugar, 1/4C oil and one egg. This totals 1983 calories, or 160 per muffin. One recipe I read on line this morning has 1.3C flour, 1C milk, 1C sugar, 3/4C oil and 2 eggs. This totals 3127 calories, or 260 per muffin. Added to this must be a glaze, perhaps 50 calories more per muffin.
One of these recipes is a dietetic food, readily eaten with eggs or cheese, and the other is not. The writers use the terms muffin and glaze, but we know what they really are. They are cupcakes with icing.
Now, you may choose to eat cake for breakfast. After all, Bill Cosby did, in a famous comedic routine. But let us not imagine that 'cake and icing' are magically transmogrified into a lower calorie, more wholesome and acceptable breakfast food merely by calling them 'muffins and glaze'.
The words we choose have meaning, and the deliberate non-use and misuse of words also carries meaning. In this case it means we want to literally have our cake and eat it too. We want to pretend we are having a breakfast food while having dessert. And I have no problem with dessert. Just call it that. Admit that you are eating dessert for breakfast. Don't kid yourself that the oily, sugary, gooey mess you are eating is 'part of a balanced breakfast'. it isn't. It's just....cake.
We do this all the time at breakfast, however. We eat pie and call it 'poptarts'. We eat fish for breakfast, conveniently calling it kippers, or lox. And of course we eat all manner of otherwise inedible meat by curing it and making a virtue out of frying hog fat. We call that bacon.
And so eating bacon and muffins sound great. Eating fried hog belly fat and cake sounds revolting. But that is what we do. We can lie to ourselves, call these items by other names, but our waistlines know, and tell us.
Oh, wait. We have words for that too. Big, hefty, thickset, big-boned. Nope. Just fat. fat fat fat fat fat (as in The Producers). From deceiving ourselves with words.
Look in the mirror and lie to yourself. It's a bad feeling. I know.
Ted
A batter is a mixture that rises by use of baking powder and/or baking soda. This includes quick breads, waffles, scones, muffins, cakes and biscuits. The difference between these entities is their ingredients and how they are beaten. A biscuit is American mille feuille pastry. Instead of layers of ultra thin dough buttered, stacked and folded, a biscuit has the shortening, used ice cold, cut into flour until crumbs are made. This is mixed and then folded repeatedly. The folding traps air, making the biscuit pop up in the familiar flaky pattern. In contrast, muffins are just barely mixed, as beating makes them tough, while a cake is beaten heavily with multiple eggs until smooth.
The other big difference is the amount of eggs, oil and sugar. A biscuit has almost no sweetener, a muffin has a little up to about 1/2 cup, and a cake has 1+ cups of sugar. A biscuit uses 1/3C butter or shortening, muffins 1/4 cup and cakes 1 cup of oil. Biscuits have no eggs, muffins one and cakes two to four. My muffin recipes have 2C flour, 1C milk, 1/2C sugar, 1/4C oil and one egg. This totals 1983 calories, or 160 per muffin. One recipe I read on line this morning has 1.3C flour, 1C milk, 1C sugar, 3/4C oil and 2 eggs. This totals 3127 calories, or 260 per muffin. Added to this must be a glaze, perhaps 50 calories more per muffin.
One of these recipes is a dietetic food, readily eaten with eggs or cheese, and the other is not. The writers use the terms muffin and glaze, but we know what they really are. They are cupcakes with icing.
Now, you may choose to eat cake for breakfast. After all, Bill Cosby did, in a famous comedic routine. But let us not imagine that 'cake and icing' are magically transmogrified into a lower calorie, more wholesome and acceptable breakfast food merely by calling them 'muffins and glaze'.
The words we choose have meaning, and the deliberate non-use and misuse of words also carries meaning. In this case it means we want to literally have our cake and eat it too. We want to pretend we are having a breakfast food while having dessert. And I have no problem with dessert. Just call it that. Admit that you are eating dessert for breakfast. Don't kid yourself that the oily, sugary, gooey mess you are eating is 'part of a balanced breakfast'. it isn't. It's just....cake.
We do this all the time at breakfast, however. We eat pie and call it 'poptarts'. We eat fish for breakfast, conveniently calling it kippers, or lox. And of course we eat all manner of otherwise inedible meat by curing it and making a virtue out of frying hog fat. We call that bacon.
And so eating bacon and muffins sound great. Eating fried hog belly fat and cake sounds revolting. But that is what we do. We can lie to ourselves, call these items by other names, but our waistlines know, and tell us.
Oh, wait. We have words for that too. Big, hefty, thickset, big-boned. Nope. Just fat. fat fat fat fat fat (as in The Producers). From deceiving ourselves with words.
Look in the mirror and lie to yourself. It's a bad feeling. I know.
Ted
Yes, food terminology is often euphemistic. Better to call a spade a spade.
ReplyDeleteA la Bill Cosby, I had chocolate cake for breakfast once, and it was delicious...not the kind of thing to do on a regular basis, but on that occasion it was delightful.
-D-