To HATE the word cupcake?!

[cupofteaandasliceofcake]

What's with the use of the word 'cupcake' everywhere now?! It's not a cupcake. It's a fecking bun. With fancy icing on it.
Sorry, just needed to get that off my chest!

(Katy was in Europe at the time, and this was their English stop-off. I seem to remember her childish charge almost Saw Naples and Died, too, but was saved by the power of properly made beef tea. And Katy's angelic cooking meant the handsome hero turned away from the pretty girl and fell for her instead.

God, that was a terrible book. Almost as bad as the Little Women sequels.)

Well yes, we're in the UK. :) All of my friends here are English, most of them bake, and when they bake North American-style muffins, they call them muffins. A friend just served some lovely blackberry muffins when several of us were visiting yesterday. Another friend has a serious muffin addiction; I think she brings muffins to every get-together we have. (and they're always very nice!)

I almost never hear a reference to English muffins in this country, though I do buy them from time to time to have at breakfast.

perectstorm I'm enjoying your tangent here btw. I'm curious about the books now; I've just looked them up. Do you think they would appeal to someone who still enjoys Little Women? (you're right about the sequels- Little Men sits on my shelf, unloved, but purchased because I felt the first book wanted company )

Sadly, NO. It's a book all about a naughty girl who falls off a swing because she was Disobedient, and is then flat on her back in agony, and possibly paralysed for life. She Learns to Control Her Temper, and Become the Angel in the House, and to realise that Pain is her Friend, thanks to saintly Auntie Helen. I ate it up with a spoon at 8 or 9 - now I'd be wanting to do a feminist critique, and refusing to let it anywhere near any small girl of my acquaintance. Nobody as cool as Jo March anywhere in sight, nor Laura Ingalls. Now they were heroines worth reading about. Well. Until Little Men and Good Wives, anyway. Though the Katy sequels were far, far worse - in What Katy Did at School she decides to found a society for ladylike girls who ignore boys, because she is so shocked by the fellow pupils who actually notice the boys school has anyone attending it. As a True Lady, she knows flirtation is a declasse and wicked thing to do that means no nice boy will ever like you.

It's worse than it sounds. (Yes. I know.)

I loved the Laura Ingalls books. Oh the simple pleasures of a ride into town and being able to purchase sugar! I still remember the summer I first read that series.

Thank you for the description. It sounds like I should pass, though I might give one a go if I see it in the library.

They'd make interesting period pieces. The funny thing is that the first time I began to critique them was when the characters in an E Nesbit novel poked gleeful fun at how awful What Katy Did was, and I was... wait. They're RIGHT!

I loved Laura. Putting out fires, twisting hay for fuel, harvesting, teaching at 13 in a totally strange township though the kids were vile and the landlady a scary hysteric just so her sister had a shot at the College for the Blind - she had such gumption. Oh, and I loved Anne of Green Gables as well, though the sequels were also patchy at best.

My family in Lancashire call a particular type of bread roll/bun/bap a muffin, the supermarket calls them oven bottom muffins I think.
I split growing between the UK and the US and a muffin to me is a cake. I prefer a US cupcake though.

I measure everything out using cups wether it is for cupcakes or a big cake - hate using the scales.

i remember the first time i had a cupcake.
i was really disappointed when i bit it and had a mouthful of icing. no cake. took me ages to bite into cake

breakfast is breakfast
meal at 12ish is dinner
snack at 4ish is tea.
if you don't have one of those, you have tea at teatime (6ish)
if you do, then 6ish meal is supper.

Yes - Americans use cups as measures hence, 'cupcake'.
Buns in my (scottish) household too.