Sunday, May 20, 2012

Dog Treats!

Peanut Butter Pumpkin Dog Treats

These little things are soo simple to make!  Four ingredients and the dogs love it (well my two do...they are my official taste testers after all).

Ingredients

2 1/2 cups whole wheat flour (I would imagine oat flour would work here as well just don't use regular white flour)
2 large eggs
2/3 cup of pumpkin (not pumpkin pie filling, just plain pumpkin)
3 tablespoons peanut butter (I use the kind that is just peanuts since dogs don't brush their teeth often)

Preheat your oven to 350F.  Put all of your ingredients into a bowl.
Eggs

Pumpkin and eggs

Everything (I forgot to take a picture when I added the peanut butter but you get the idea)


Mix everything together until it can be formed into a ball (after a few minutes with the spoon I usually just dig into it with my hands (washed obviously), it mixes up a lot faster this way I feel).  If your mix is a little dry (this one was) add a tiny bit of water.  If it is a bit moist add some flour.  It should come out looking something like this:

 

Usually I still have some flour left in the bowl so I work on kneading it in and making a more rounded shape to ensure everything is incorporated evenly.


After that, roll out the dough until it is about 1/4 in thick, choose your favorite dog cookie cutter (mine just happens to be a dog bone thanks to Aaron) and cut away!



~~So many dog bones, so little time~~

The semi-finished product

Line your bones up on a cookie sheet and bake for about 20 minutes for softer bones and about 30 minutes for crunchy bones (what my boys like).  

Still raw.  
You can place your cutouts fairly close together because they don't rise or spread at all, just puff up slightly.  



In the mean time roll your scraps into another ball and continue to cut out your shape until all dough is gone (the little balls on the bottom were what was left of the dough after I ran out of room to cut out shapes).

 They were trying to be so patient...they love it when I cook for them!














Allow your treats to cool before giving them to your dogs.  They do awful at blowing on their food before consuming it!


Store in a zip top bag or some other sort of container that limits the amount of air allowed to flow in and out.  I am not sure how long they will last as they go pretty quick around here, but I would probably not push it over a few weeks.  I hope your dog enjoys these as much as my two have!

Here is the link where I got the original recipe pumpkin peanut butter dog treats