I may have written about this before, but I want to reclaim buns! Bun are very small cakes, sometimes baked in paper cases, sometimes baked in special tins called bun tins. They are not yeasted, although I will make an exception for the odd traditional small bread cake such as a Chelsea bun (the best in the world are from Fitzbillies in Cambridge) Muffins on the other hand, are plain bread rolls, usually round and slightly flattened, ideal for splitting in two and filling like a sandwich or toasting and having with butter or with any other topping you might like.
I had this idea of making a sort of bonfire night bun… and I mean a small cake thingy in a case, paper or tin… so I looked for recipes… I was inundated with recipes for yeasted breads, and the only real buns I could find were muffins, which in this case were super-large buns.
Buns are buns… muffins are muffins… I haven’t got a picture of a bun but I have a featured image of a bunny!
Lois Elsden 
I think there is confusion about the meaning of “muffin”. It can be a small round bread which is best split and toasted, but can also be a small cake.
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Yes… I guess I was thinking that it used to be that muffins were always bread, as in the days of the muffin men! I always had the feeling that muffin as a cakey unyeasted yummy thing was an import from the US!
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We stayed in a 5 star hotel last week. At breakfast we were offered various kinds of bread and muffins. My wife asked for a muffin split abd toasted and the waitress looked very puzzled. She said the muffin is a small cake’
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Tee hee!
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It’s the American influence I think. What they call muffins I would call large buns and what I call buns they call cup cakes.
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Same here!
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