Thursday, December 4, 2008

Tropical Teacher Appreciation Muffins


A couple of weeks back, I got an email from my daughter's elementary school asking parents to bring in some snacks for the teachers during Conference Week. "This will be great," I thought since I just happen to love cooking.

But what to bring? Surely roasted chicken is not what they had in mind. Nor fancy mashed potatoes or fish. They might have liked my Frankenbread...but I wanted to represent well. This event required something self-contained and semi-healthy (I wanted everyone to feel like they should eat it!)

When I read that they needed breakfast items for one of the mornings, that helped me solve my dilemma. Muffins! A little breadish, a little cakeish, all packaged nicely in its own pretty wrapper (and conveniently enough just right for sticking a toothpick-impaled business card on).

I've been making these Tropical Muffins for a year or so now. And although "tropical" might make one think "summer" at first, I think we Seattleites could all use a little tropical this time of year. The only thing they could use is a little more color--any suggestions other than a nasty pink cherry?

And thank you to all of the teachers at Lakeview Elementary School, especially my daughter's teacher--Meighan Lailey!

Tropical (Low-fat) Muffins

Ingredients:

1 1/3 c flour (use soft whole wheat pastry flour for extra nutrition)
1 c regular rolled oats
1 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp baking soda
1/2 tsp salt
1 c mashed ripe bananas (about 2)
1 c low-fat buttermilk
1/2 c packed brown sugar
2 TB canola oil
1 tsp vanilla
1 large egg
1/2 c canned crushed pineapple in juice, drained
1/3 c flaked coconut (I use unsweetened)
3 TB finely chopped macadamia nuts (or cashews)

Topping:

2 TB flaked coconut (again, unsweetened works fine)
1 TB finely chopped macadamia nuts
1 TB sugar
1 TB regular rolled oats

Directions:

Preheat the oven to 400 degrees and line a muffin pan with muffin papers.

Combine dry ingredients (flour through salt) in a large bowl.

In a separate bowl, combine bananas and next ingredients (through egg). Add wet ingredients to flour mixture, stirring just until moistened. Stir in pineapple, coconut, and nuts.

Spoon batter into paper cups (it should make 12 muffins).

Prepare topping. Sprinkle about a teaspoon of topping over each muffin.

Bake for 18 minutes. Remove from pan and cook on a wire rack.

(Note...if you try to peel the paper off before they are totally cool, it may stick a bit. If you must eat a fresh warm muffin, bite off the extra bits when no one is watching!)

2 comments:

Unknown said...

I've got a massive jar of macadamias that are now destined to become these muffins. Thanks for the inspiration!

Christie @ Fig & Cherry

Sweet Cheeks said...

this sound so good.

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