I found these sheep cupcakes at Martha Stewart via Pinterest.  I wanted to surprise my daughters with them for our sheep/animals unit, but I didn’t want to do cupcakes; I decided to make muffins instead.  They would have looked better if I’d made frosting, but I didn’t want to make a bunch of frosting just for a couple of muffins, so I just used a couple of white candy melts and the marshmallows, and relied on the heat of the fresh-from-the-oven muffins to stick them.  Here is the recipe for the banana muffins I made.  (If you want to do frosting, cream cheese frosting would go well with these.)

Banana Muffins

3 cups freshly-ground brown rice flour (If you’re not gluten-free, you can use 2-1/4 cups of fresh hard white wheat flour.)
1 tsp. salt
1 tsp. baking powder
1 tsp. baking soda
1/2 tsp. cinnamon (or to taste; opt.)
1 c. milk (or thinned yogurt)
1 egg
1/2 c. oil (I used Tropical Traditions coconut oil – see below.)
1/2 c. honey
1-2 mashed bananas

Combine dry ingredients thoroughly.  Add wet ingredients and mix just until blended.  Pour into greased or lined muffin cups (will fill 15-16 standard muffin cups).  Bake at 400 for 15 minutes.

Tropical Traditions coconut oil

Contrary to what we’ve been told for years, there is no solid evidence that naturally saturated fats cause heart disease or problems with cholesterol.  In fact, like everything God made and gave for food, they can be very healthy!

Coconut oil is a great dairy substitute for those who are intolerant.  (It’s especially tasty in mixes with chocolate or other tropical fruits like bananas – as in the recipe above.)

This is the stuff I used in my muffins (I melted it first.):
32-oz. – Gold Label Virgin Coconut Oil – 1 quart

I’ve used it in cookies, muffins, cakes, etc.  I’ve even used it for frying egg rolls.  (I don’t care for virgin coconut oil in eggs, though, because it retains a bit of a coconut flavor, and I didn’t think that went well with eggs.)  Coconut oil melts at approximately body temperature, so the temperature variances in the average kitchen will cause it to turn from liquid to solid and back over the course of time.  (It will also often solidify into little beads in a recipe if you stir in something really cold, so don’t be surprised by this.)

It can be used externally, as well as internally.

Tropical Traditions has other tested coconut recipes here: Coconut Recipes

If you’d like to win your own jar of coconut oil, you may enter via the Rafflecopter below.  (As always, if you’re reading in your email or an RSS reader, you’ll have to click through to see the Rafflecopter widget.)

Disclaimer:  Tropical Traditions provided me with a free sample of this product to review, and I was under no obligation to review it unless I so chose. Nor was I under any obligation to write a positive review or sponsor a product giveaway in return for the free product.