h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

I'll try it directly. Have you got any decent recipes for muffins that use butter rather than olive oil as the lipid ingredient? Most places round here use oil and the result is rather more rubbery than it is cakelike.

These cookies are great! Ta very much for the recipe and I hope I can return the favour one day.

I know of a recipe for muffins using butter. I'm at work at the moment but I'll try to remember to check for it at home and I'll post it on my user page.

I've also discovered a recipe for muffins made using that wonderful breakfast stuff, WEETABIX.....if anyone's interested let me know.

Sounds too healthy to be a true muffin, which is of course a cake and therefore by its very nature exempt from health laws. There's a few coffee stalls round here that sell organic rhubarb muffins. I haven't reid them and suspect I never shall.

Surely organic would go against the the health laws too. Otherwise I can't see a problem with Rhubarb Muffins.

I thought muffins were more breadlike than cakes - e.g. corn muffins? Of course the British and Americans have very different ideas about muffins.

The Weetabix muffins also contain fruit and my son thinks that they make a great alternative breakfast. It makes him think he's getting cake when he's not really. Just what every toddler needs, a bit of deception!

I have to say that Pineapple Upside Down cake is my fave.

There are already too many breadlike products in the US, so the muffin is a cake. Thereby by being flavoured with rhubarb, an alleged vegetable flavour cake is created. This is of course wrong. Vegetables do not a cake make. If Marie Antoinette had said "let them eat vegetable flavour cake" the peasants would have laughed for a good while before getting the revolution going.

But what about carrot cake?

And I had a vegetable cake at the recommendation of a friend from Hong Kong in a Cantonese resstaurant in Oxford which was quite nice. Although the snot covered prawns were a mistake if you ask me.

And while we're at it, not enough people make their own cakes. It's so theraputic.

Back to muffins. You must be aware of the breadlike buns in Britain which are called muffins? Round things that you toast and tase greate with lots of butter on.

They're called crumpets and only became referred to erroneously as muffins after the Great Food Shift began in the mid 1980s. There's even a few discrepancies between food names between England and Scotland; my girlfriend believes crumpets to be flat and muffins to be thick with little pockmarks in the top. Carrot cake has another name when served in posh places but it too is not a cake. It's like people calling the Koala the Koala Bear, which is wrong. Just out of interest, are there any marsupial equivalents of whales?
Carrot cake isn't a real cake. It's probably better to refer to it as carrot bread. Potato scones are scones and not potato cakes, though my girlfriend's parents insist on referring to them in exactly this way. Carrot scones? Carrot slice? Maybe a new word is required for things that want to be called cake but which contain vegetables and thus are not cake. Fake? Carrot Fake has a nice ring to it. Carrot Bake is wrong as Bakes are sloppy things containing lentils made by hippies. Carrot sponge? Sponges can be a type of coral and thus not necessarily a sponge cake. Carrot Spong sounds good.

I think you are misunderstanding me. I know of thre separate things.

Pikelets which are round flat, bit like drop scones but have lots of holes made from air bubbles. They are usually sweet.

Crumpets which are thicker than the above but have holes going through them. Basically however I think they are made in a similar way.

Muffins which are more roll like. No holes. They get sliced in half and toasted. These are much more breadlike.

And then of course there is the much more cake like muffin. These to my knowledge may be sweet (as in Blueberry) or savoury (as in corn). These are certainly what ammericans would refer to as muffins.

Maybe some further investigation of shop shelves is need hear.

Oh and Tattie scones are most definately scone and NOT Potato cakes.

Do you mean corn as in Triticum aestivum or Zea mays? Surely it's not an actual flavouring as with blueberry but merely the fibre component of the recipe?

Corn muffins as I recall use maize flower and definately don't taste sweet.

On the subject of difffering names, I've just been to our canteen where they are selling Bakewel Tart. This is a completely different thing to what you would get if you went to the town of Bakewell and asked for a Bakewell tart. These are much more delicious.

I must reply to all my articles - I didn't realise you people were here! Glad you liked the recipe- the ? are all 1/2 but didn't come out but I didn't realise that it was wrong - must fix this later.... A friend gave me a big piece of orange cake to DIE for and gave me the recipe it has no butter in or fat so it quite healthy - lots of eggs so maybe not so good. I will stick that up sometime too.

Thats a bit better my 1/2 oz went all skew-wiff.

Wasn't there a report recently that basically said that eggs weren't as bad for you as we first thought they were. I can't remember it off hand but I have the article at home so I'll have to check it out. Certainly it was suggesting that you could eat more of them with no significant problem (except of course the risk of Salmonella).

I just made the most amazing cake for my son's birthady. Pineapple, cherry and sultanas with some cinnamon. Very nice (well, we liked it).

Stick the recipe up here. Ever tried delia smiths chocolate truffle torte..Mnnn. I expect that would be copyright theft though..

I have and I agree. As long as you don't post it up there can be no copyright theft. However, you might like to ask her for a little reward for the free advertising!

I've just had a thought. How about a h2g2 cook book?

Good idea, once they start indexing it would work like that. They should call it cook book though not receipe section or food.

As a start though, I thought I would get the ball rolling. See
http://www.h2g2.com/P94051

Great idea. I have just stuck my Gazpacho soup in it!!

Gazpacho soup is http://www.h2g2.com/A75593