If I have a cupcake. And then I take the frosting off the cupcake. Is it still a cupcake, or a muffin?

Unfrosted cake is still cake.

not in the club, tho

Cupcake, because muffin batter and cupcake batter are made slightly differently

Bad news for u bud, muffins are cakes.
- They're quickbreads, actually. To be pedantic though, cakes are technically very sweet quickbreads with a different order of ingredient mixing.

It’s still a cupcake because it’s cake and not muffin. Cake is a sweeter and fluffier kind of bread because it has more sugar and fat, whereas muffins are basically just dense bread.

Neither are really bread as they are not leavened with yeast.
- They're categorized as quick breads.

It's a half-eaten cupcake. You can take two wheels off a car, but that doesn't make it a motorcycle.

If you frosted a muffin, would you call it a cupcake? What if you baked a really tiny sourdough loaf, with garlic and onions. If you frosted it, would it be a cupcake?

Completely different batter, so no. You would have a deconstructed cupcake.

Muffins I believe are denser with more fat and less sugar. Though I see what you're saying and we're all just making excuses to eat dessert for breakfast sometimes.

Personally since I discovered my local supermarket has passable pain au chocolate in 10 packs I’ve been eating those for breakfast with a coffee. Be the dessert for breakfast you want to see in the world.

Theseus, is that you ?

This was exactly my thought, too

My understanding is that a cupcake is made of the same stuff as cake, while a muffin is more like bread

When I see this question I can only be sad for people who can consider it perplexing. Yeah - if you have a sufficiently boring muffin and a sufficiently dense cake, you could see them as pretty similar but ... eat better food.

Put some good stuff in your muffins (blueberries, poppy seeds, nuts, chocolate, etc) and learn to keep your cakes lighter and fluffier (especially for cupcakes) instead of rich like a muffin.

As others have said, they are different batters, the cooked result of both should be pretty noticeably different with it without frosting.

Well thought out answer. I like it

I’ve asked myself (and anyone else that would listen) this question many times before, and still have not yet heard a satisfactory answer.

Isn't the cupcake defined by being in a cup? So I'd say a muffin is also a cupcake.

No. A cupcake is defined by being a cake in a cup. Muffins aren’t cakes.
- Muffins are also in cups though
  Checkmate cakecupalists
What about a double mud cake?