Culinary Adventures: Peanut Butter and Pumpkin Treats

I have wanted to start making my own dog treats for a while, both in order to keep an eye on what's going into Oscar's system and in an attempt to save some money. I found a really simple recipe for peanut butter and pumpkin dog treats on allrecipes.com. I knew I wanted to make something with pumpkin in it, since I've been reading and hearing so much about how good pumpkin is for a dog's digestive system - and it smells lovely! The peanut butter is a bonus, since Oscar is crazy about it. I was looking for something easy, because while I like to cook, I'm pretty bad at baking. I am capable of ruining the simplest of baking projects. Like Pillsbury cookie simple. However, I figured I'd give this recipe a shot.

• 2 1/2 cups of whole wheat flour
• 2 eggs
• 1/2 cup of canned pumpkin
• 2 tablespoons of peanut butter
• 1/2 teaspoon of salt
• 1/2 teaspoon of ground cinnamon

Mix all of the ingredients together. For that, I'd suggest just using a wooden spoon or your hands, because the dough just gets stuck in the whisk. You'll need to add water as you go, as I found the mixture to be pretty dry. Roll the dough out and then use a cookie cutter to cut out the treats. The recipe suggests a thickness of about 1/2 an inch. The treats will rise a little, but I found that they didn't spread out as they baked. They should be baked at 350 degrees for 40 minutes to make them hard. I may put them in for a little less time the next time, as they were pretty crunchy after 40 minutes, though I guess that's good for helping to clean his teeth.

I found some cute little Easter mini cookie cutters at HomeSense. They're just a bit bigger than I would have liked, but not a bad size for dog treats. I also made little round treats for training. The recipe made a huge batch - over 50 treats in total, not including the little ones. After my first round of treats, I still had a good-sized ball of dough left. I added extra pumpkin and peanut butter to the second round for more flavour. I left out the cinnamon, but only because I forgot to pick some up at the store. I think I'll stay with the extra peanut butter and pumpkin the next time I make these.

Getting organized!

Everything's under control so far...

Whisk = not helpful.

A little floury, but at least it looks the way dough
is supposed to look - more or less. I think more
kneading the next time will be helpful.

Making progress...

Cute!

My first batch, ready to go.

Baking up nicely...

Little training treats!

Success!

The aftermath.

Oscar seems to like them quite a bit, but then he's not all that picky. They do smell good! I put the extras in the fridge because I'm not sure how quickly they'll go bad, since there's canned pumpkin in there. I'm pretty pleased with this first canine culinary experiment, so I'm going to keep going with my homemade treats. Next up will be sweet potato chips. I may also try to dehydrate some apple slices, and I'd like to find some recipes for treats involving some banana or carrot. I'll let you know how it goes!