Difference between Potato Pancake and Hash Browns

It sounds to me like the issue may be that you're crowding the pan.

Basically, to get everything nice and brown and crispy, you need enough space for all of the steam to escape. That picture you showed has potatoes stacked on top of each other -- that means as the bottom items cook, they're going to end up steaming the items above them.

At a diner, they have a large griddle to work with -- they can really spread things out. You're not typically that lucky in a regular kitchen, as you don't have as much space, and you have a lip on the pans that'll hold the steam in.

So, either work in smaller batches, or consider recipes that use an oven -- using sheet pans instead of a pan on the stove solves much of the problem.

One other trick is that most diners don't start from raw potatoes -- maybe with hash browns, but not for home fries, you're not going to get the nice soft interior in a reasonable amount of time unless you start with a potato that's already been baked or boiled. (If you're doing things in the oven, you might be able to, but not in a pan)

Just for reference ... I have a 14" cast iron skillet that I use for home fries ... and it's about the right size for cooking a single large potato, which might be two servings, maybe three for kids. (I tend to cook carb-heavy meals).

update : I probably should've stated this directly -- you want the chunks of potato to form a single layer in the pan, with space in between them.

There is considerable overlap between cupcakes and muffins.

Method

From a technical point of view, muffins are made by the muffin method, making them small quickbreads. In the muffin method, the wet ingredients are combined in one bowl; and the dry ingredients are combined in another bowl. Then the two are quickly incorporated together with minimal mixing to avoid gluten development. This gives muffins a somewhat coarse crumb.

Cupcakes are small cakes, and are made by one of the traditional cake methods such as the creaming method, the reverse creaming method, the genoise method, the chiffon method, and so on. They tend to have a finer crumb than muffins.

Contrast

While no single criterion distinguishes a muffin from a cupcake if you do not adopt the technical definition above, the following trends exist:

• Cupcakes tend to be sweeter than muffins; there are savory muffins such as cornbread
• Cupcakes are often iced or frosted, whereas muffins tend to have no topping, or a simple crumb topping
• Cupcakes usually have a head or top no larger than the body of the cupcake; muffins are often encouraged to overflow their baking cup, so that their top is larger in diameter, giving them somewhat of a mushroom shape
• Cupcakes are almost always, well, cupcake shaped; muffins can be made as just muffin tops
• Cupcakes are almost never crispy or crunchy; muffins are often encouraged to brown and develop texture, especially on the tops