The Gold Medal Goes to the Chocolate Muffin as Bakery Shines at Olympic Village

Chocolate muffins for sale at the Village Plaza Cafe in the Olympic Village, in Saint Denis near Paris, France, 10 August 2024. (EPA)
Chocolate muffins for sale at the Village Plaza Cafe in the Olympic Village, in Saint Denis near Paris, France, 10 August 2024. (EPA)
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The Gold Medal Goes to the Chocolate Muffin as Bakery Shines at Olympic Village

Chocolate muffins for sale at the Village Plaza Cafe in the Olympic Village, in Saint Denis near Paris, France, 10 August 2024. (EPA)
Chocolate muffins for sale at the Village Plaza Cafe in the Olympic Village, in Saint Denis near Paris, France, 10 August 2024. (EPA)

Freshly cooked bread and a selection of French pastries were meant to be the stars of the Olympic village where athletes from across the world have packed the on-site bakery. But the gold medalist was a surprise: the American-inspired chocolate muffin is what went viral on social media.

Norwegian swimmer Henrik Christiansen has been dubbed “muffin man” after he posted a series of videos featuring the “choccy muffin,” accumulating millions of views on TikTok. He gave it an “insane” 11/10 star review.

“It’s been an unreal experience,” Christiansen told The Associated Press on Saturday.

“I never imagined it to become this big, but it’s fun,” said Christiansen, who swam in the 800-meter freestyle, the 1,500-meter freestyle and the 10-kilometer marathon races.

As an endurance athlete, he said he can afford to eat high-calorie food — like the dense chocolate muffin studded with chocolate chunks — every day.

Over the two and a half weeks he stayed at the Olympic village in the northern Paris suburb of Saint-Denis, Christiansen ate “seven or eight” of these muffins known for their melted fudge center.

"It’s not really that much. I think people will be disappointed when they learn it’s not five a day,” he said.

About 40,000 meals are served each day of the Games to thousands of athletes from more than 200 countries and territories who are staying in the Olympic village.

And the bakery became the meeting point for many, chief baker Tony Doré said.

Doré and his team produce fresh baguettes — added in 2022 to the UN’s list of intangible cultural heritage — and a variety of other bread cooked every day on site.

“It’s unbelievable,” Doré said, describing how quickly athletes adopted the very French habit of getting their fresh baguette every morning.

Most “had never tasted a baguette freshly out of the oven. Inevitably, they come back, and they are under the charm of that bread,” he said. “Now, some teams come back every day and say, ’Your baguette is awesome, it’s amazing and that smells so good’.”

Another champion product, Doré said, is the "cocoa bread" specially created for the Olympics, basically a piece of double chocolate French bread but with less sugar and butter to better fit with athletes' diets.

Some also tried the French breakfast: fresh bread with butter and jam, croissants and other “viennoiseries."

American athletes like Simone Biles, the most decorated gymnast of all-time, and sprinter Fred Kerley, bronze medalist on the 100-meter, came to the bakery, Doré said. Some others took part in bread-making classes held every day.

Philipp Würz, head of catering for the Paris 2024 organizing committee, said the village’s team of four bakers each day produced about 600 baguettes and 900 cacao breads, quantities that exceeded initial plans because of growing demand.

“It's one of our prides to have insisted on local French bread,” Würz said.

Unrivaled, though, were the chocolate muffins, made by another local producer, which reached 4,000 per day.

Other pastries being made include custard pie, vanilla tartlet, Paris-Brest — choux pastry stuffed with a praline flavored cream — and lemon tart. The bakery will be open for the Paralympic Games that begin on Aug. 28.

“I expect a wave of athletes, because they are already aware,” said Doré, the chief baker.

For everyone else, the recipe for the now world-famous chocolate muffin has been posted on TikTok, Christiansen said, himself hoping to re-create it at home.



New England Town Celebrates Being Birthplace of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles

Bronze statues of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles characters are displayed as part of the permanent collection at the Woodman Museum, Thursday, Sept. 5, 2024, in Dover, N.H.  (AP Photo/Charles Krupa)
Bronze statues of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles characters are displayed as part of the permanent collection at the Woodman Museum, Thursday, Sept. 5, 2024, in Dover, N.H. (AP Photo/Charles Krupa)
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New England Town Celebrates Being Birthplace of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles

Bronze statues of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles characters are displayed as part of the permanent collection at the Woodman Museum, Thursday, Sept. 5, 2024, in Dover, N.H.  (AP Photo/Charles Krupa)
Bronze statues of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles characters are displayed as part of the permanent collection at the Woodman Museum, Thursday, Sept. 5, 2024, in Dover, N.H. (AP Photo/Charles Krupa)

As the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles grew to become a pop culture sensation, the place where they were conceived rarely got mentioned.
It wasn't the New York City sewers, where the Turtles mutated from regular reptiles into a crime-fighting quartet who battled foes with nunchucks, snark and pizza. Rather, it was a small city near the New Hampshire coast.
According to The Associated Press, a new exhibit hopes to put that community, Dover, New Hampshire, at the center of the Turtles' story and, in turn, attract Turtle-obsessed fans or anyone else who grew up reading the comics and watching Ninja Turtles movies and TV shows. At one point in the 1980s, the frenzy around the Turtles was called Turtlemania.
“It's the birthplace,” said Kevin Eastman, who, along with Peter Laird, created the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles 41 years ago when the two shared a house in Dover. The first issue went on sale a year later. “That’s where the Turtles were created. ... It is very historic and very important to us.”
The Turtles' exhibit opened last month at the Woodman Museum, which houses an eclectic collection that includes a stuffed polar bear and a Victorian funeral exhibit replete with a horse-drawn hearse.
With its explosion of colors and cabinets full of action figures, the exhibit aims to be the place to go for all things Turtles.
It starts with franchise's humble beginnings in Dover, where the duo formed Mirage Studios, a play on the fact they were creating the first comic in their living room rather than an actual studio. Inspired by Eastman's fascination with turtles and martial arts, they came up with the crime-fighting Turtles and self-published their first comic in black and white.
“We hoped that one day we would sell enough copies of our 3,000 printed, $1.50 comic books that we could pay my uncle back,” Eastman said, adding that they had no intention of writing a second issue until fans asked for more.
“We loved our characters. We loved what we did. We told the best story we could. We hoped for the best,” he continued. “But I also could never have imagined that one comic book would lead to any of this.”
Ralph DiBernardo, whose store in nearby Rochester sells comics and games, was among the first to champion the Turtles. He knew Eastman and Laird from selling them comics and was the first person to sell their Turtles comic commercially after purchasing 500 copies. But he said at the time, it seemed more like a favor to friends than a business decision, with him thinking, “those guys are never going to make their money back.”
“To watch them go from two struggling guys just barely getting by to becoming multi-millionaires, it’s that American dream story that just never happens,” said DiBernardo, who remains friends with the two artists.
The exhibit details the emergence of the Turtles as a global phenomenon, featuring pizza-obsessed characters with catchphrases such as “cowabunga” and “booyakasha.”
Among the exhibit's highlights are a video game console where visitors can play Turtles arcade games, vinyl records of soundtracks from Turtles movies and signed, first-run Turtles comics, including some valued in the tens of thousands of dollars. The marketing power of the Turtles is also on display, with everything from Turtles-inspired Christmas ornaments, throw rugs and backpacks to a talking toothbrush.
In the middle of it all is a set of massive bronze statues depicting the four turtles — Leonardo, Michelangelo, Donatello and Raphael — along with the mutant rat and resident sage, Master Splinter. The display was one of 12 made as part of a fundraiser by Eastman to benefit a museum in Northampton, Massachusetts.