Dog Treats

Today is my dog?s birthday.  His name is Cooper and he is turning 7.  Cooper is awesome and I love him. He is a labradoodle, half standard poodle and half labrador. The great things about labradoodles are that they have hair and do not shed. 

Cooper loves to play ball and can fetch for hours, he loves kids.  He also loves his stuffed animals but none of them have stuffing in them anymore.  It usually takes about 5 minutes before all the stuffing is out on the floor. 

For his birthday he usually gets a fresh bone with lots of bone marrow, it keeps him occupied for hours, and I am sure a sore jaw the day after.  But this time I decided to try to make my own dog treats for him, and he loved them. I have no idea how but he sat in the kitchen waiting for them, he knew they were for him.

I got this great recipe from Michelle from Big Black Dog blog who created this recipe. This makes about 25 dog treats but it depends on what size you make them, I made mine pretty large (2?x 1/5?).  Also depending on the size of your food processor you might not fit all the flour in there and have to use a bigger bowl to mix the rest of the ingredients.

Recipe adapted from Big Black Dog

Yields: 25 treats | Prep Time: 10 minutes | Bake Time: 12 minutes

3 1/2 cups whole wheat flour

1 cup cornmeal

3/4 cup oatmeal flakes

1 medium apple

1/3 cup peanut butter (or use 1/2 c. Chunky Peanut Butter)

1/2 c crushed peanuts (skip if you?re using Chunky Peanut Butter)

1/4 cup vegetable oil

1/2 cup water

2 eggs

1 tsp vanilla

Turn oven to 400F.

You will be using a food processor for all the mixing.  Dice up apple. Don?t bother to peel the apple.

Add to a food processor, diced apple, peanut butter, oil, water, eggs and vanilla. Blend until apple is completely emulsified.

Add the cornmeal and oatmeal and blend. With the food processor running, gradually add the flour until completely incorporated.

Add nuts and pulse 2 or 3 times, just enough to mix nuts into the dough. Dough will be thick and sort of rubbery to the touch.

Remove dough to a small bowl.

Roll 1 tbsp of dough into a ball. Depending on the size of your dog, you may want to make a smaller sized ball.

Place each ball of dough on a parchment lined baking sheet and press down to form a flat disk. Dog treats do not rise when baked, so whatever size they are going into the oven, is the size they will be when baked.

Bake at 400 degrees for about 12 minutes. When treats are done, turn off oven and crack open oven door. Leave treats in oven overnight to dry out.

The treats do mold easily so freeze what you can?t use in 1-2 days. Then just thaw as needed.

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