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I was today years old when I learned there was a restaurant chain named for a beloved dog that specializes in chicken fingers. Yes, I’m talking about Raising Cane’s; no, I don’t live under a rock (at least I didn’t think so!). Where has this joint been all my life? I love dogs! I love chicken fingers! But I digress… Champion swimmer Katie Ledecky — who became the most decorated American female athlete at the 2024 Paris games — was invited by Raising Cane’s to give a keynote address at their employee appreciation event in Cancun last week. While there, Ledecky shared what she gets asked the most since the Olympics is: did you try the double chocolate muffin? As you may recall, Norwegian swimmer Henrik Christiansen whetted the world’s appetite this summer with his artful, funny TikTok videos devoted to the double chocolate muffins. While Christiansen was a fan, it seems Ledecky was not, but just on the grounds that it was basically dessert for breakfast:
Katie Ledecky’s sweet tooth was no match for the food at the 2024 Olympics.
The swimmer, 27, revealed that she tried the “infamous” chocolate muffins during her stay in Paris for the Games this summer while attending a Raising Cane’s employee appreciation in Cancún, Mexico, on Tuesday, Sept. 24.
After giving a keynote presentation, and before heading into a Q&A with the food establishment’s owner and founder Todd Graves and co-CEO AJ Kumaran, Ledecky said one question she is asked all the time is tied to the sweet treat.
“One question I’ve been getting a lot is, ‘Did you try the chocolate muffins in the Olympic Village, the infamous chocolate muffins?’ Yes, I did,” the athlete said.
“I tried it after I was done competing for breakfast,” she continued, adding: “I had about two bites because it was straight up chocolate cake, and I can’t do that for breakfast.”
Earlier this summer, during the Games in Paris, double chocolate muffins that were being served in the Olympic Village went viral on TikTok.
At the time, PEOPLE reached out to Sodexo Live! — the company responsible for feeding the 15,000 athletes living in the Village — to learn more about the treats. It was discovered that the goodies, made popular by Norwegian swimmer Henrik Christiansen, were 130g “Maxi” muffins “presented in a tulip cup.”
“It is filled and topped with dark chocolate, featuring chunks of dark chocolate and milk chocolate. This muffin is served daily at the main athletes’ restaurant and at the six takeaway food areas within the Village,” a representative for the company explained.
“This dessert is very popular, as around 2,000 chocolate muffins [are] consumed each day at the Athletes’ Village. In total, Sodexo Live! Plans to serve 100,000 muffins throughout the Athletes’ Village during [the] Olympic and Paralympic Games,” they added at the time, without revealing the tasty recipe.
“I had about two bites because it was straight up chocolate cake, and I can’t do that for breakfast.” Well have you tried, Katie?! Come on, I know you have the discipline to build up the stamina! So even if you start with two bites one morning, by the end of the year you can be downing the whole muff, easy! And speaking of, there’s a crucial follow up question that was not asked of Ledecky (at least not in People Mag’s reporting). She says she ate two bites and couldn’t have any more… for breakfast. Come clean, Katie: what happened to the rest of the muffin? I hope it was saved for later or given to someone else to enjoy!!
Here’s what I’ve learned today: you can be the newly-anointed most-decorated American female Olympian and still get a barrage of questions about a chocolate muffin; I need to find a Raising Cane’s and try their chicken fingers; I need to find a job at Raising Cane’s or somewhere else that will appreciate me all the way to Cancun. The last place anyone from my office was sent to was a Wegmans to procure a chocolate cake with chocolate frosting to get us through an afternoon slump. As a species, we might be addicted to chocolate.
Photos credit: IMAGO/Eurasia Sport Images / Avalon, Getty and via Instagram
What is supposed to be the difference between a muffin and a cupcake? To me it’s the same, i make cake batter, put it a muffin cup and call it a muffin. Oats?
Cupcakes get frosting on top but otherwise it’s the same thing IMO. You do often get different flavours in muffins that are ‘healthier’ plus savoury muffins, etc.
Truth! Cupcakes are just muffins with icing! I had a graphic tee back in the day with an anthropomorphised cupcake pointing at a sad muffin on it that read “Muffins are ugly cupcakes.”
So muffins are cupcakes before they put their makeup on?
Find an old recipe! Real muffins were much lower in sugar than modern muffins, which, yes, usually are just cake. They were a lightly sweetened quick bread back in the day (or in the current day for those of us who look for muffin recipes like that).
Everyone’s recipes vary but for me, most of my muffin recipes have about 1 cup of sugar and cupcakes/cakes have 2-3. The butter is increased, sometimes doubled in cake. If I added chocolate chips to a muffin recipe, it’d be less than 1/2 as much.
Muffins allow for all kinds of protein additions that are easier to add in without changing the the texture.
To her other point, I am far (far far far far) from being an athlete of any kind. I go sugar-free every January and it completely resets my cravings and tolerance for sugar.
Then, like a true champion, I push on and am eating dark chocolate everything in no time =)
Muffins are denser than cupcakes, have less sugar, and aren’t frosted.
Huh, today I learnt there is something I can beat an Olympian at, I could absolutely eat one of those for breakfast.
I loved all the online coverage of her competitions and the jokes about needing the wide angle lens to show that there was anyone else in the pool with her, she’s incredible.
We have Raising Cane’s in Ohio, can confirm that it is delicious 🤤 They sell little stuffed Canes (the dog) during the holidays that are dressed in different outfits. We have one in a Charlie Brown costume and a couple in Christmas pajamas lol
Raising Cane has just infiltrated New York City, joining Chick-fil-A in the great chicken wars.
May we all receive such inspiring words:
“So even if you start with two bites one morning, by the end of the year you can be downing the whole muff, easy!”
I tried Raising Cane when I was in Vegas a few months ago and I’ve been trying to recreate the sauce ever since! It’s soooooooooo good!
American Walmart apparently has a great value dupe available but they were out when I checked. I got a different great value dupe (chicken sauce vs chicken FINGER sauce) which I’ve been told is a CFA dupe (we don’t have that either in my part of Canada, and I wouldn’t support them anyway, based on how awful I hear their politics are)
Chocolate cupcake/chocolate muffin, all the same except the frosting and I’d have no problem eating one for breakfast!
We just got Raising Cane’s in Rhode Island. It was good, but not amazing. I’d go back if I was in the area but not a place I’d find myself craving enough to go out of the way for it.
I know those famous Olympic ones are just cake. I still want to make them!
I can’t do sweets for breakfast, either. I’m an eggs and bacon girlie.
Same – I prefer almond milk and low sugar cereal. If I ate a muffin like that I would be a hangry 90 minutes later.
We had an exchange student from Germany with us for a few weeks and she had Cane’s on her bucket list (along with other American staples like Costco and the Starbucks drive thru). We got the family take out pack – chicken fingers, fries, Texas toast and coleslaw. She thought it was super delicious, but about 15min after eating said she felt kind of sick. I was like welcome to the American fast food experience! Even my 16yr old son says he can only eat Cane’s if he has nothing left to do that day in case he needs to be close to a restroom. Regardless, he asks for it once a week!
Why is chocolate addictive? It’s because all addictive food has a balance of flavors. Chocolate is bitter which makes it a perfect foil for sugar. It’s also acidic, making it a perfect foil for fat. If you add a little salt to your chocolate baked goods it amplifies the chocolate flavor(so does coffee) and balances the sugar.
Besides the frosting, muffins, traditionally are made with oil not creamed butter. The leavening in a muffin is chemical (baking powder + acid). Cakes are cooked for longer and almost all are leavened by emulsified air, sugar and fat. The main exception is chocolate cake which is made like a muffin.
❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️
Any muffin with chocolate in it, is not a breakfast bread, it’s a dessert. And most muffins today have way to much sugar in them. You can’t taste the other ingredients at all. It’s too bad.
As a French, I’m still baffled that the Olympic Village fell over themselves for those muffins. I used to get them at my university cafeteria for 50 cent.
Don’t get me wrong, they’re good muffins! But not to the point where they had to be flown over fo the US for an ephemeral degustation in NYC coffee shop.
Long live the CROUS Muffin, I guess.
I’m off to France in a few week, do you know where I can try it?
Also I love how much variety you get in chocolate puddings in France, my favourite is with pear compote and the extra dark one. They like their dark chocolate more and you can get lots more desserts with dark chocolate.
Oh, she looks lovely, and she wore 3 inch(?) heels on her 6′ frame – well done! I’m looking forward to her book to see what insight it provides into the discipline required for this level of out-of-this-world excellence.
We were staying at a Bratislava B&B years ago when the water in the house went out. The next morning, the hostess gave us huge wedges of chocolate cake on our breakfast trays (along with pickled eggs and vegetables) to apologize for the inconvenience.
We snarfed that cake in seconds. I am clearly not Katie Ledecky.
Raising Cane’s is pretty average in my opinion but there’s always a 3-4 car deep line in the drive-thru, even at 11:30pm! I don’t like the special sauce