Applesauce Doggie Cookies

Finally! Another doggie cookie recipe! My past few attempts at making doggie cookies have been failed attempts, so I gave up on it for a while due to lack of motivation. I was kind of forced to make these cookies after I cut Lucky's hair and nails and gave him a bath. I usually give him a chewy bone after the bath, but we didn't have any. Instead of suffering with a wet and pouty dog (he is very good at making me feel bad with his sad eyes), I made him cookies. He is very happy now.

I don't have an exact recipe right now since it was a spontaneous decision to make these, but the method is very similar to the peanut butter banana cookies. I will make an updated post when I make these again.

The fruit content of these cookies possibly makes them a bit high in sugar content, so limit how many you feed your dog per day. Apples, bananas, and oatmeal are all good for dogs, but we don't need chubby doggies.

Applesauce Doggie Cookies

4oz apple sauce

1/2 large banana, mashed

2/3 C uncooked oatmeal, the slow cooking kind

1 1/2 C flour

Mash the banana in a small bowl. Stir the apple sauce in with the mashed banana.

Add the oatmeal and stir until blended.

Add 1 cup of flour and combine. Slowly add more flour until the dough loses most of it's stickiness. It will still be a bit sticky.

Roll out the dough on a floured surface. Be sure to flip the dough and reflour the surface since the dough is sticky!

Cut out shapes and place them on a cookie sheet.

Bake at 350 degrees Fahrenheit for 15-20 minutes.

Thicker cookies will stay kind of chewy and thinner cookies will be more crispy, like crackers.

Let the cookies cool before feeding them to your dog!

Enjoy!

Carrot Garlic Doggie Cookies (2nd attempt)

It's been a while since I've made doggie cookies. The previous few attempts were failures and that made me decide to give up on the quest for a while. But, I am back at it. This is something that Lucky appreciates very much. He is, of course, the official taste tester! And he loves these cookies.

My previous attempt at making these carrot dog treats didn't turn out at all as I expected. This attempt worked better. The result is sort of a drop cookie for dogs. It has a kind of chunky texture, the outside is dry and a bit crisp, and the inside is nice and soft. This recipe does include garlic, which is okay to give to dogs in small quantities. However, if your dog has known issues with digesting garlic, simply remove it from the ingredient list.

Note: After a few days, the cookies I made lost most of their crispiness.

Carrot Garlic Doggie Cookies

1/2 C mashed carrots (puréed would give a smoother texture)

1 egg

1/4 t garlic powder

1/2 C oatmeal (uncooked)

3/4 C flour

Cook and mash the carrots and place them in a bowl. Add the egg and garlic powder. Mix at medium speed for about a minute. This mixture will only get as smooth as the mashed carrots allow.

Add the oatmeal and mix until blended.

Add the flour a quarter cup at a time. If you want to roll the dough out, add a bit more flour until it isn't very sticky. Otherwise, the dough will be somewhat sticky. You may need some extra flour if you used puréed carrots.

Drop globs of the carrot dough onto a baking sheet.

Bake for 15 to 20 minutes. Bake longer if you want them to be crispier.

Cool completely before serving! Keep these in a cool and dry place. If the cookies have some moisture in them, they may start to get moldy after a week, so keep an eye on them.

Doggie Cookies: Oatmeal Cookies

These are the result of a failed attempt to make chicken flavored doggie cookies. I realized too late that I didn't have all the ingredients I wanted to use, so I just threw something together from what I had. The recipe is simple and I'm not including pictures because they just look like normal smushed oatmeal cookies. I'm not sure how much of a chicken flavor they have, but they have a faint chicken smell!

Oatmeal Cookies

1 C oatmeal
1 C flour
1/3 C chicken broth
1 egg (beaten)

Combine the oatmeal and flour. If you want to make cookies that are less chunky, run the oatmeal through a food processor to turn it into a powder. Combine the chicken broth and egg. Mix the wet and dry ingredients together.

With your hands, roll the dough into small balls. Press down onto a cookie sheet. Bake at 350 for 15 minutes. Cool completely before serving.

Note: Use all natural chicken broth! Don't use products that contain MSG. That stuff is bad for humans, so why would you feed it to your dog?

Doggie Cookies: Almost Minty

I'm working on new flavors of doggie cookies again. The main issue with the cookies seems to be texture and that they dry out. I'm cautious with what I will add to the dough because I want to keep the cookies healthy. Eventually, I'll get that all situated and post some new recipes. For now, here is a look at one type of doggie cookie that I'm working on.

My dad has bought quite a few different types of doggie breath mints for Bichon. Bichon has terrible breath that even daily brushing isn't helping. Unfortunately, since his teeth are part of the issue, he can't (or just won't) eat the doggie breath mints because they are too hard. I was asked if I could make some sort of cookie out of the mints.

What I did was crush up the mints into tiny pieces and dissolved them some in warm water. Next time I will let them sit in near boiling water for a bit to let the pieces dissolve a bit more. I then mixed in some oatmeal and flour until it reached a cookie dough consistency. I rolled the dough into little balls, pressed them down a bit with my thumb, and baked them for 8 minutes. The result was a greenish cookie with gooey melty spots.

Bichon ate the cookie, but only after realizing I didn't have anything better to offer. Lucky ate the cookie without thinking twice... he'll eat nearly anything.

Any suggestions for future flavors of doggie cookies? I'm considering chicken, turkey, and sweet potato.

Doggie Cookies: Carrot & Garlic (Beta Test)

After I created the first recipe for doggie cookies (the peanut butter and banana kind), I researched dog safe foods and created several more recipes. I never got around to testing any of them. I did run through the entire process in my mind for each recipe, which I suppose I can call the alpha testing phase. Yesterday I did a beta test for one of the recipes and... I found out that things don't go so well if you fail to follow directions. Yes, I failed to follow the directions that I created. At some point in the future, this post will be rewritten to include more/better photos and the recipe will possibly be modified (or just updated to include a method to use baby food).

The recipe that I created works fine. It made cookies that my dogs love. Unfortunately, I added far too much water at one point which caused me to add lots and lots of flour and oatmeal. The result was more of a doggie cracker than a doggie cookie. So, if you ever want to make doggie crackers instead of doggie cookies, just do what I did: double the amount of water needed then mix in a flour and oatmeal mixture until you get a dough instead of a sticky blob.

This recipe is for a carrot and garlic flavored dog cookie. Raw carrots are a healthy snack for dogs; vets even recommend them. Lucky doesn't know what to do with a raw carrot if you give him one. He will bite it in half and then leave it in the middle of the floor. Fortunately, he loves these cookies so he can still get some of the health benefits of carrots! For some extra flavor I added garlic which, in moderation, is also good for dogs.

Carrot & Garlic Doggie Cookies
1 C baby carrots
1/2 C Oatmeal
1C flour
1 clove garlic (minced) or 1/4 t garlic powder
2 C Water

Place the water in a small sauce pan and bring to a boil. While the water is heating up, shred approximately 5 baby carrots to make 1/4 cup of carrot shavings. Set the carrot shavings aside. Place remaining carrots into boiling water and boil for 20 minutes or until soft.

Once the carrots are fully cooked, pour the water into a glass measuring cup and place the carrots in a food processor. Mash the carrots. If you don't have a food processor, this can be done with a fork. Add the garlic to the mashed carrots and mix well.

(At this point I gave up on taking pictures! As you can see, my carrots didn't even mash very well.)

Mix the oatmeal and flour into the mashed carrots. This will create a crumbly mixture. Mix in the carrot shavings until combined. Add the warm carrot water by the tablespoon, mixing well between each addition. If you do this mixing by hand, you will be less likely to add too much water. Add water to the mixture until it reaches a dough-like consistency.

On a well floured surface, roll out the dough to 1/4 inch thickness. Use cookie cutter to cut out shapes. Repeat until all the dough is used.

Bake at 350 for 15 to 20 minutes. Let the cookies cool completely before serving to any doggies.


Notes: You can also steam the carrots (this will allow them to retain more nutrients). Alternatively, you can use baby food instead of going through the mashing process. Just be sure to include the carrot shavings.

Doggie Sundaes

I was going to post a new recipe for Doggie Cookies, but I couldn't resist making a Doggie Sundae instead. My inspiration for this idea comes from Lucky looking at me with very sad eyes, as if he is starving to death, whenever I eat ice cream. I can't share my ice cream with him because most adult dogs are lactose intolerant. Since summer is nearly here and the days are getting warmer, Lucky needs a nice treat to cool off with so I came up with Doggie Sundaes.

Doggie Sundae Cups:

muffin pan (use a large muffin pan for big dogs!)

your dog's favorite doggie cookie recipe

Make the dough for the doggie cookies according to the recipe. I used the peanut butter & banana recipe since it is Lucky's favorite kind. Roll out the cookie dough on a well floured surface. Find something to use as a cookie cutter that is larger than the cupcake cups in the pan like a cookie cutter or a plastic storage container. Cut out circles for as many sundae cups as you want to make. Use the rest of the dough to make doggie cookies!

Place the circles in the cupcake cups, pressing them to the sides of the pan. Bake according to the recipe directions.

After baking, the sundae cups can cool completely in the pan or on a wire cookie rack.

Once the sundae cups are completely cooled, it is time to make the frozen treat to go inside. I made a crushed ice substance to go inside because Lucky loves to eat snow during the winter. You can also use the Frosty Paws brand of dog safe ice cream.

Peanut Butter Snow

4 ice cubes

1 t peanut butter

Place the ice cubes in your food processor and chop them for 30 seconds or until the ice is completely chopped. Scrape the ice away from the walls of the processor container and add the peanut butter. Run the processor for 15 seconds to mix in the peanut butter. You may need to scrape the container and run the processor a few times to get it well mixed. Alternatively, you can mix in the peanut butter with a spoon.

Fill the sundae cup with the ice mixture.

Lucky didn't want to be photographed while eating, so he picked up the sundae and ran out of the room to eat it. There was nothing left of the sundae cup when he was finished.

Note: It is not a good idea to give a large amount of ice to your dog at once; a quick drop in internal temperature can cause health issues.

Doggie Cookies: A First Attempt

This is Lucky, he is a cocker spaniel. He will eat almost anything. He hates it when I bake because I don't share the food with him. He doesn't digest a lot of dog treats very well, especially treats that contain food coloring.

This is Bichon, he is a bichon frise (I didn't name him). He is a very, very picky eater when it comes to dog food and treats.

I've wanted to make dog treats for months. Homemade treats are probably healthier for dogs than the treats you buy at the store, which are made with filler ingredients and food coloring. I've looked for a decent dog treat recipe online, but I didn't like most of them. The various recipes I found did give me a general idea of where to start to make my own recipe. I tested out one of the recipes I created today.

Lucky loves peanut butter flavored anything, so I started with peanut butter. Oatmeal is good for dogs, as long is it is the kind that comes in the cardboard cylinder and isn't sweetened with sugars. During my research I found out that dogs can eat almost any fruit (except grapes!), and I had some bananas going bad, so I added some banana. Flour and water hold almost anything together, so I included as well.

This is the recipe I came up with:

Peanut Butter & Banana Doggie Cookies

1/4 cup peanut butter

1/2 cup uncooked oatmeal, the slow cooking kind

1/2 banana (mashed)

1 cup flour

1/2 cup water (approximately)

Combine the peanut butter, oatmeal, and banana in a bowl until well mixed and crumbly. I mixed it by hand, but you can use a mixer. Add flour and mix well. Slowly add the water until the mixture is smooth and kind of dough-like. Adding too much water will cause it to be sticky. If you add too much water, that is easily fixed: add flour by the spoonful until the dough isn't sticky.

On a well floured surface, roll out the dough to desired thickness (I did 1/4 of an inch). Cut out shapes with cookie cutters, making sure to press down hard to get through any oats. Peeling away extra dough from the cut outs will make them easier to pick up and transfer to a cookie sheet. Repeat until all dough is used.

Bake for 20 minutes at 350 degrees. Cool completely on wire cookie rack before feeding to your dog. Makes 2 dozen cookies.

Lucky happily ate the cookies and wanted more!

The ultimate test was giving one to Bichon. He enjoyed it, but I had to break the cookie into small pieces.

The baking time can be increased for crunchier cookies or decreased for softer cookies. The recipe should be fine to double or triple. Whole wheat flour may be used instead of white flour.

Approximate nutrition facts per cookie: 38 calories,1.5g fat, .5g fiber, 1.5g protein.