So, how does one muffin rise up from among the adjacent edibles,

[short bus president]

and come to be known in all his glory as KING MUFFIN?

How, indeed?

Wankers.

[MallRat]

1. Actually, I just saw an episode of "Good Eats" about this.

The trick is to not over-mix the batter. If you make the batter too homogeneous and you don't let the baking powder do its thing, you get huge pockets of air inside the muffin.

If you fold the ingredients together just until fully incorporated, you get light, fluffy, cakey muffins with the air well-distributed throughout.

Behold, King Muffin.

[short bus president]

3. Who'd have thunk, Alton's the muffin man...

I'm not a gay man, in reality (although I sometimes shamelessly flirt that way in the Lounge), but I'm telling you, there are very few people on Earth could get me to switch teams faster than Alton Brown. I mean, if he was a gay man, that is. And if I was a gay man, too. But we're both not, so I wallow in my repressed heterosexual man-misery. Sigh.

[ScreamingMeemie]

2. He does so by being infused with much chocolate...perhaps chips

even. :P

[short bus president]

4. Some people... some people like cupcakes exclusively,

While I myself say there is naught - nor ought there be -
Nothing so exalted on the face of God's grey earth
As that prince of foods . . . The Muffin!"

;-)