The many kinds of food – Muffins VS Brownies

I grew up with ‘bread’ (面包)’, ‘baozi’ (包子), ‘biscuit’ (饼), ‘cake’ (糕), and ‘mantou?’ (馒头). My understanding of this type of food spanned from here, grouping future encounter of foreign/ domestic variation into this four main categories. For example, I think of croissant and baguette as subset of bread, and to differentiate them from the good old loaf of Gardenia, my brain Google Translates them as French Bread (法国面包).

My system worked quite well for a while, until I inevitably grouped too many variations into one type and confuses myself.

It also dawns upon me that I don’t know much about Cupcakes, Biscotti, Tart, Fudge, Toffee, Meringue, Pavlova, Tiramisu, etc, apart from saying that this is a type of western cakes/ biscuits, and proceed to swallow them down.

Plus, due to another mistaken id of muffins and brownies, I now have images of each pasted on my FB wall by the ghost of FHKL.

My lack of understanding prompted me to do something about it. My first step is to ATTEMPT to tell you something about Muffins and Brownies!

Muffins
Muffins are a type of bread, but smaller in size. The ones we (Malaysians) most familiar with are cornbread muffins, invented by Americans. Think Kenny Roger’s muffins. They are sweet, but not as sweet as cupcakes, and most of the time contains raisins and/or chocolate chips, and served in paper muffin cup.

There is another type of old school muffin called English muffin, which is disk shaped and less savoury. Think of the McMuffin’s buns, ya, something like that.

Brownies
Now, brownie is like a hybrid of cake and biscuit, served in square or bar shape. Think Secret Recipe’s chocolate brownies. You can pour in extra chocolate sauce, and eat it with ice-cream or whipped cream. Did I mention that American invented brownies too? During the Chicago World Fair in 1893.

I hope you enjoy reading this little introduction. Maybe we can talk about cupcakes and scones next time.

This advertorial is sponsored by the Malaysians Love Brownies & Muffins Association.