A “duffin” (doughnut + muffin) has several different recipes; some are simply a filled doughnut. Starbucks(United Kingdom) introduced the “duffin” in October 2013 and had “duffin” trademarked on July 3, 2013. Bea’s of Bloomsbury, however, had made duffins since at least 2011.
 
“Duffin” has been cited in print since at least March 2007.
 
     
GardenWeb
RE: Dirt Bombs…
Posted by lorijean44 (My Page) on Sat, Mar 10, 07 at 18:33
I took the plunge, too! Sol, these are wonderful. I was curious to see how much of the cardamom I would taste, but it just lends a little bit of a “flowery” taste - not strong at all. Cass loved that the cross between a muffin and a doughnut, dubbing them “Duffins”:
 
Insomnisnack
Dirt Bombs, Doughnut Muffins, Or Duffins? August 26, 2007
Filed under: baked goods,cupcake,dessert,doughnut muffin,food,sweet — insomnisnack @ 2:58 am
I don’t know what you call them, but I call them “breakfast , lunch, or dinner”. A neighborhood bakery (side note: I was wondering as I post, can you call it a bakery if they don’t bake on said premises? apparently the answer is “yes“.) sells these really delicious pastry. On Saturdays I go by and pick up a treat with coffee. I thought, I can make this! I found several recipes online, but my favorite looked the most like the muffins from the shop I frequent. I followed the recipe, which is not my forte. I’m a girl who likes to improvise. Lo and behold, they turned out exactly the same. I will freeze the extras and thaw for Saturdays and other special occasions!
(...)
COMMENTS
insomnisnack Says:
March 14, 2009 at 1:20 pm
Hey Stephanie – thanks for your comment!
 
The recipe was mentioned on another site and is called Kathleen’s Doughnut Muffins by Carrie Brown, John Werner, and Michael McLaughlin from The Jimtown Store Cookbook (HarperCollins)
 
Here’s the link:
http://www.thefoodsection.com/foodsection/2006/07/neither_muffin_.html
   
The Shoebox Kitchen
Duffins (Doughnut Muffins)
Posted on July 23, 2010 by TheshoeboxKitchen
That insatiable sweet tooth had us hunting for a quick and easy baking experiment this afternoon, preferably viable with the ingredients we already had on hand in the shoe box.  After hunting through cookbooks and our favorite food blogs, we settled on a very simple recipe for “Muffins that Taste Like Donuts” over on the Pioneer Woman’s Tasty Kitchen recipe repository.  The Pioneer Woman had raved about these, and because we like both doughnuts and muffins, we just had to try them.  We also had to rename these “Duffins,” just because we love to combine multiple words into one.
 
Twitter
Manuela Durson
‏@Europepastries
Pumpkin Duffin With Cream Cheese Stuffin’: A cross between a doughnut and a muffin, this recipe will add fall spic… http://bit.ly/cIsjWR
4:37 AM - 29 Oct 10
 
An American Cupcake in London
Duffins – The Donut Muffin
Posted by Cupcake Kelly on Nov 15, 2010 in Chocolate, Donuts, Muffins | 2 comments
All I have to say is that these are awesome. Is it a donut? Is it a muffin? It’s a baked donut in the shape of a muffin that tastes like a donut…Whatever it is it’s fun and it’s tasty!
 
brush tops with melted butter and top with cinnamon and sugar for an alternative topping
 
My Dad found these on the Internet for me after my aunt went to a Mimi’s cafe and they had something similar. She had to call and tell him about them! Yes, we love food that much in our family.
 
Duffins
adapted from Mama Foodie (makes 12)
Ingredients
170g unsalted butter at room temperature
1 cup sugar (fill just shy of the top)
2 eggs
1 tsp vanilla
3 cups plain flour
1/4 tsp baking soda
1 tsp salt
1 tsp nutmeg
1/2 + 1/3 cup milk
1/8 cup buttermilk
1 bar semi-sweet chocolate
sprinkles for decorating
 
New York (NY) Times
QUICK BITE | SUMMIT
Do You Know the Duffin Man?
By TAMMY LA GORCE
Published: June 3, 2011
(...)
Aesthetic considerations aside, Brownie Points owes its existence to its well-edited selection of fresh-baked products; among its best-selling items are “duffins,” doughnut-muffin hybrids that comes in a variety of flavors, including cinnamon sugar and raspberry ($2.75). The bakery opened in 2008 after its owners had a successful season of selling their duffins, cookies, brownies and cupcakes at the 2007 Summit Farmers’ Market. (At the time, Mr. Conway used the kitchen of a friend’s bakery.)
 
Semisweetie
Glazed Doughnut Muffins (Duffins!)
10/10/2011 by Lara
Recipe: My Baking Addiction’s Glazed Doughnut Muffins
Total time: 40 minutes
Ease: easy
Unusual ingredients: nutmeg, cinnamon
 
Google Books
Food Lovers’ Guide to Memphis:
The Best Restaurants, Markets & Local Culinary Offerings
By Pamela Denney
Guilford, CT: Globe Pequot Press
2012
Pg. 63:
Bluff City Coffee, 505 S. Main St., Memphis, TN 38103; (901) 405-4399; bluffcitycoffee.com
(...)
Take a little time and enjoy deciding between single-serve yogurt cakes (cherries and peaches are mixed in the dough), scones, turnovers, muffins, and duffins, a specialty of the house that crosses muffins and cake doughnuts.
   
What’s For Dinner?
Saturday, March 30, 2013
Lemon Blueberry “Duffin” (Donut + Muffin)
I saw this recipe…on pinterest…duh! I have tried lots of great recipes from there lately. And this one is great too.
This one is Light Lemon Blueberry Donuts.
 
Zagat
4/05/2013 05:00:00 AM
Dish of the Day: Duffin at Bea’s of Bloomsbury
By Malika Dalamal
Muffin or doughnut? If you can’t decide, here’s a chance to have both at once. All three branches of Bea’s of Bloomsbury (St. Paul’s, Bloomsbury and Bermondsey) offer this muffin-shaped cake doughnut filled with jam. The yeast-free, buttery cake is coated in a sugar crust, giving you the best of your favourite treats.
 
European Union Trademark Database
Word Mark: DUFFIN
Number: 011953601
Basis: EM
Filing date: July 3, 2013
 
Starbucks (UK)
Introducing the Duffin
04 October 2013
Posted by Julie Prebble – Food Category Manager
(...)
Step forward the Duffin: taking the best of a muffin: that moist texture, the iconic shape and then mixing it up with elements of a traditional jam filled doughnut. Our Duffin is filled with a raspberry jam; we’ve added just a hint of nutmeg to our buttermilk base and then covered it in sugar once baked.
 
Toronto (Ontario) Life
Starbucks jumps on the Cronut train with the Duffin; people get really mad
by Caroline Youdan
October 8, 2013 at 2:28 pm
Starbucks U.K. solidified the chain’s rep as the dorky dad of the food world by coming way too late to the Cronut party with the Duffin, a sugar-dusted muffin with a jelly-filled centre. Now a popular London bakery is claiming that the product is a blatant ripoff of its own muffin-doughnut hybrid, which it sells under the same name. Like any super-important breaking news, the scandal is being tracked by minute-to-minute updates in the press, as well as its own Twitter hashtag: #Duffingate.
(...)
COMMENTS
mojo • 6 hours ago −
Tim Horton’s Fruit Explosion muffin? Its literally the exact same thing and we’ve had those for years and years.
 
Eater
Duffingate: Did Starbucks UK Rip Off the Duffin?
Tuesday, October 8, 2013, by Hillary Dixler
Turns out the new Starbucks UK hybrid pastry the Duffin is even less imaginative than previously thought. A London bakery claims Starbucks ripped off their Duffin recipe, and then trademarked the term so that the bakery can no longer sell them. The scandal has even inspired its own Twitter hashtag: #Duffingate.
 
The bakery Bea’s of Bloomsbury, with four locations in London, sums up its assumptions about what happened in a Facebook post: “I understand that Starbucks UK wants to cash in on this hybrid dessert craze—I get that. But to make a product that uniquely contains buttermilk, nutmeg, and raspberry jam, and to have the name duffin, not doughnut muffin, and to have claimed that their team of ‘bakers’ came up with it magically on their own, seems a bit odd to me, particularly when the British baking lexicon isn’t heavy on nutmeg or buttermilk.”
 
The Starbucks Duffin does appear to have the same basic components as Bea’s. In their announcement blog post, Starbucks explains: “Our Duffin is filled with a raspberry jam; we’ve added just a hint of nutmeg to our buttermilk base and then covered it in sugar once baked.” The bakery claims that because their recipe was published in their 2011 cookbook, and featured in online reviews (like this one by Zagat), Starbucks didn’t just happen onto the idea themselves, but rather copied Bea’s.
 
Bea’s also learned that Rich Products has trademarked the term “duffin,” which potentially means Bea’s would not be able to sell their products with that name. (The trademark is from July 2013.)