A muffin is somewhat like a small cake, and though it does resemble a cupcake in that they both have cylindrical bases and rounded conical tops, they usually are not as sweet as cupcakes and generally lack frosting; savory varieties (such as cornbread muffins) also exist. They generally fit in the palm of an adult hand, and are intended to be consumed by an individual in a single sitting. A muffin can also mean a different baked good, the smaller, disk-shaped English muffin, although this usage is uncommon outside Britain. As American style muffins are now sold in the UK, the term can refer to either product, the context usually making clear which is meant. There are many varieties and flavors of muffins made with a specific ingredient such as blueberries, chocolate chips, cucumbers, raspberry, cinnamon, pumpkin, date nut, lemon, banana, orange, peach, strawberry, boysenberry, almond, and carrot. These ingredients are then baked into the muffin. Muffins are generally considered to be a breakfast food, but in Europe where they have tea (the meal) they are eaten then.

Early history

The word "muffin" was first registered in English in 1703 as "moofin", possibly derived from the Old French moufflet, which meant "soft" in reference to bread, or from the Low German muffen, meaning "small cakes". Muffins may indeed have started out as a form of small cake, or possibly an adaptation of cornbread. Early versions of these muffins tend to be less sweet and much less varied in ingredients than their contemporary form. Made quickly and easily, they were useful as a breakfast food. They also rapidly grew stale, which prevented them from being a marketable baked good, and they were not seen much outside home kitchens until the mid-20th century. Recipes tended to be limited to different grains (corn, wheat, bran, or oatmeal) and a few readily available additives (raisins, apples in some form, or nuts). Fannie Merritt Farmer listed 15 recipes of this type in her Boston Cooking-School Cook Book of 1896, of which there were two each of "one-egg," "berry," oat, graham flour, and rye; one with cornmeal, one with cooked rice, and the remaining three slightly enriched versions of the plain "one-egg" muffin.

Farmer used the term gem for her corn recipe, which was a muffin baked in a pan of lozenge shapes rather than circular cups. With the invention of circular muffin paper cups, hard-to-clean iron gem pans lost popularity, and are rarely used today, although corn muffins baked in the form of ears of corn remain a tradition. The development of non-stick pans has allowed the production of very elaborate muffin shapes (animals, holiday motifs, etc.), but the circular muffin remains the norm.