40 Fun Facts About Muffins

Eating a few poppy seed muffins has made innocent people fail which kind of workplace screening?

A drug test can come back positive after a couple of poppy seed muffins, because the seeds carry traces of opium alkaloids such as morphine. The amounts are far too small to have any narcotic effect.

Which 1990s sitcom had Elaine inspire a bakery that sold only the crisp tops of muffins?

Seinfeld built a 1997 episode around the idea, and the leftover muffin stumps proved so hard to give away that Newman was hired to eat them. The writer borrowed the habit from a girlfriend who ate only the tops.

London's muffin men announced themselves with which noisy tool, which an 1839 Act of Parliament tried to silence?

A handbell rang out wherever the muffin man walked, and the sellers simply ignored the ban. To Victorian children the sound was as welcome as an ice cream van's chimes are today.

Which US state adopted the blueberry muffin as its official state muffin after a campaign by elementary schoolchildren?

Minnesota adopted it in 1988 after pupils in the town of Carlton, studying how laws are made in civics class, proposed one of their own. Wild blueberries grow in the bogs and forests of the state's northeast.

In Laura Numeroff's 1991 follow-up to If You Give a Mouse a Cookie, which animal is handed a muffin?

A moose gets the muffin in the second book of the series, drawn like the first by Felicia Bond. Later titles hand a pancake to a pig and a cupcake to a cat.

In the English nursery rhyme, the Muffin Man lives on which London street known for its theatres?

Drury Lane is his address in the rhyme, which was first written down around 1820. Real muffin men walked Victorian streets selling the flat, yeasted kind of muffin door to door.

Which playwright has Algernon calmly eat muffins while Jack scolds him in The Importance of Being Earnest?

Oscar Wilde closes the second act of his comedy with the two friends bickering over the muffin dish. The play opened in London on Valentine's Day 1895.

In the Australian cartoon Bluey, how is the loud, tantrum-prone toddler Muffin Heeler related to Bluey herself?

Her cousin Muffin is the daughter of Bluey's uncle Stripe and aunt Trixie, and the big sister of baby Socks. Her full name is Muffin Cupcake Heeler.

In the Shrek films, the Muffin Man is described as the creator and father of which fairy-tale character?

Gingerbread Man Gingy was baked by the Muffin Man, who returns in Shrek 2 to bake Mongo, a giant version that helps storm the castle. Conrad Vernon voices all three characters.

Unlike oven-baked rolls, English muffins are traditionally cooked on which piece of stovetop equipment?

A griddle cooks each side in turn, and flipping the muffins is what gives them two flat faces instead of a domed top. Bakers can set them in metal rings about an inch high to keep them round.

Which yeasted British bread, made from pourable batter, has holes open to the top, unlike an English muffin?

A crumpet starts as a batter poured into a ring, so its bubbles burst through the surface as it cooks. An English muffin is shaped from dough, which keeps its holes hidden inside.

American-style muffins rise without yeast, placing them with banana bread and scones in which family of baked goods?

Quick breads swap slow-working yeast for baking soda or baking powder, so the batter can go straight into the oven. The name most likely arose in the United States at the end of the 19th century.

When baking soda meets an acid such as buttermilk in muffin batter, which gas bubbles up and makes it rise?

Carbon dioxide is released as the two react, and the trapped bubbles expand the batter and give a muffin its open crumb. The same reaction puts the fizz in effervescent tablets.

Bakers usually tell a cupcake from a muffin by which sweet, spreadable topping that muffins tend to go without?

Frosting, also called icing, marks a cupcake as a dessert, while a muffin passes for breakfast. Even so, some sweet muffins are richer in fat than many cakes.

Which fruit flavours New York's official state muffin, adopted after students across the state campaigned for it?

Apple muffins became a New York symbol in 1987, eleven years after the state gave the same fruit its official fruit title. Only two other states have named an official muffin.

Which light, eggy pastry, a close relative of Yorkshire pudding, is traditionally baked in muffin tins?

A popover is named for the way its batter swells and pops over the rim of the tin. It is America's version of the batter puddings English cooks have made since the 17th century.

Blueberry Muffin is a book-loving friend of Strawberry Shortcake, whose franchise began on which kind of product?

Greeting cards from American Greetings introduced Strawberry Shortcake in the 1970s, and the dolls and cartoons followed. Blueberry Muffin is one of the dessert-named friends in her circle.

Which variety is named in Massachusetts law as the official muffin of the commonwealth?

Corn muffins hold the title under a one-sentence state law. Northern cornbread batter is so close to the muffin's that the two are sometimes interchangeable.

Which thick syrup traditionally sweetens bran muffins alongside brown sugar?

Molasses and brown sugar give a bran muffin its sweetness, while the bran stands in for part of the flour. Milk is often added too, because it helps the tops brown.

Which crumbly muffin topping of flour, butter and sugar takes its name from a word for something scattered?

Streusel comes from a verb related to the English word strew, a fitting name for crumbs sprinkled over batter. Some bakers work spices and chopped nuts into the mix.

In 2015, a San Francisco bakery said burglars ignored the cash and stole the recipe for which hybrid pastry?

The cruffin, a croissant baked in a muffin mould, was first made in Melbourne in 2013 before the bakery made it a craze. The thieves left money and computers untouched, and nobody was ever charged.

Which Australian TV comedy is credited with popularising muffin top as slang for a bulge above a tight waistband?

Kath & Kim may have been the first to spread the phrase, which began as Australian slang in 2003. By 2006 it was the Macquarie Dictionary's word of the year.

Derpy Hooves, a cross-eyed background character officially credited as Muffins, appears in which animated franchise?

My Little Pony fans spotted her crossed eyes, an animation error, in the 2010 premiere of Friendship Is Magic and made her a mascot. The muffin link came when she was seen excitedly mouthing the word.

Which rock guitarist closed the 1975 album Bongo Fury, made with Captain Beefheart, with a song called Muffin Man?

Frank Zappa took the title from the old nursery rhyme and used the song as a concert finale for years afterwards. It opens with a spoken-word passage recorded in the studio.

Muffin the Mule, a puppet who danced on a piano top, became a 1940s children's star on which broadcaster?

BBC presenter Annette Mills played the piano while the puppet mule clip-clopped across its lid, live from Alexandra Palace. A die-cast Muffin is described as the first toy licensed on the back of TV fame.

In which New York borough did English immigrant Samuel Bath Thomas open the bakery behind Thomas' English muffins?

Manhattan's Ninth Avenue was home to his first bakery by 1880, and a later site on West 20th Street still carries a plaque as The Muffin House. Thomas had arrived from England six years earlier.

Thomas' English muffins are owned by Bimbo Bakeries USA, the American arm of a baking giant from which country?

Mexico is home to Grupo Bimbo, which entered the United States in 1994 by buying a California tortilla company. Its American brands now include Entenmann's, Sara Lee and Oroweat.

Which Michigan brand, known for small blue-logo boxes of muffin mix, was created by Mabel White Holmes in 1930?

Jiffy began with a biscuit mix that Holmes devised after seeing a single father's unappetising baking. Her grandson Howdy Holmes, a former Indianapolis 500 driver, took over as chief executive in 1995.

Which author of the 1896 Boston Cooking-School Cook Book printed recipes for both American-style and English muffins?

Fannie Farmer included both kinds in the book that made her name, and it became a widely used kitchen text. She had enrolled at the school herself at the age of 30.

The bakery-café chain Muffin Break, which relaunched in Queensland in 1989, began in which country in the 1970s?

Canada is where the idea started, before the Foodco group bought it and opened its first new-style shop in the town of Coolangatta. The chain reached New Zealand in 1994 and Britain in 2001.

In the Dutch version of the Muffin Man nursery rhyme, the title character sells which seafood instead of muffins?

Mussels replace muffins in the Dutch rhyme, and the mussel man lives in Scheveningen, the fishing harbour near The Hague. Singapore has its own version starring a satay man.

The word muffin, first printed in 1703, possibly comes from a word for small cakes in which language?

Low German Muffen, the plural of Muffe, is the likeliest source, though dictionaries call the origin uncertain. A rival theory points to an Old French word for soft bread.

Doctors coined the term blueberry muffin baby in the 1960s for the skin spots of newborns infected with which virus?

Rubella caught in the womb was once thought to be the rash's only cause, though doctors now link it to other infections and blood disorders too. The MMR vaccine prevents it.

Muffin is the name of the window manager in which desktop environment built by the Linux Mint team?

Cinnamon has used Muffin since version 1.2 in 2012, which keeps the kitchen theme going. Muffin began as a fork of Mutter, the window manager of GNOME 3.

In 1910, Kansas City grocer Fred Wolferman shaped his dense English muffins in which makeshift moulds?

Tin cans left empty at the family grocery served as his moulds, a thrifty trick that set his muffins apart. Thomas' had been selling English muffins in New York for thirty years by then.

Which author of the 1747 English cookbook The Art of Cookery described the inside of a muffin as like a honeycomb?

Hannah Glasse printed one of the earliest muffin recipes in a British cookery book, though the bread itself is older still. The word had first appeared in print some forty years before.

Bolo do caco, a flatbread likened to the English muffin, is cooked on a basalt slab on which Portuguese island?

Madeira and its neighbour Porto Santo are home to the bread, which is named for the caco, the flat stone it is cooked on. It is usually served with garlic butter.

The round egg in the first Egg McMuffin was shaped inside a ring coated with which non-stick material?

Teflon rings kept each egg in a neat circle, with the yolk broken before it set. The sandwich made its debut at a Santa Barbara-area McDonald's that its inventor co-owned with his son.

Which muffin and cookie brand takes its invented name from a suggestion by founder Ken Rawlings's 12-year-old daughter?

Otis Spunkmeyer was never a real person: the name was coined for a cookie shop that opened in Oakland, California, in 1977. The company later switched from running shops to supplying frozen dough.

On the sitcom 30 Rock, which character boasts of a hit single called Muffin Top that reached number one in Israel?

Jenna Maroney, played by Jane Krakowski, is a modest pop success overseas, and the same song reached number four in Belgium. Krakowski earned four Emmy nominations for the role.