It's been awhile... but wheat free doggy biscuits

I know it's been a while since I've posted, but life got in the way.  I got a job doing some janitorial work, which I hated, but that's over now and I'm back to the dog biscuits.  My puppies are very grateful for that. lol.  So I have a friend who rescued a little dog that was in pretty bad shape.  She had to put the doggy on a very strict diet so I invented a recipe that didn't use wheat.  I think since I never took any pictures I will post the recipe.  I know there are plenty of people out there that have dogs that actually have some allergies, like my mom's Blue Heeler and Australian Shepard mix who can't have any thing from the nightshade family.  We made full use of our Vitamix and our new Kitchen-aid mixer.

Oatmeal Apple cinnamon treats

Ingredients: Dry

½ C ground flax

2 TBS Nutritional Yeast

3 C Whole Oats (ground in Vitamix into flour)

Ingredients: wet and ground in vitamix to baby food consistency

1 apple and 1 carrot

1C water

1tsp cinnamon, peanut butter, bone meal

2 doggy multivitamins and 5 capsules of Salmon oil

¼ C blueberries and ¼ C chopped Parsley

1/8 C Dried mint

Directions:

Preheat oven 350®

Mix Dry ingredients in mixer and slowly add wet mixture

Roll out and cut in desired shape

Bake for 30 minutes, or until cooked to desired consistency.

Let cool and serve up to puppies.

MInty fresh breath biscuits (Ingredients)

If you're anything like me you can't stand stinky dog breath.  Sure I've done the whole brushing my bog's teeth, but that is really not as easy as it sounds.  That actually got me to thinking about those dog treats that are supposed to freshen their breath.  I thought why not make something like that at home?  After some research I found that mint is perfectly safe for dogs, and we have a very large fresh mint plant in our front yard.  Since only a couple of the dogs like the fresh mint I had to mix it with parsley  for the dogs that don't.  For some reason they like the parsley better.  Honestly if all the dogs were like my dad's I wouldn't have even needed to make these since Bear stole a mint leaf and ate it giving him very minty fresh breath. lol. I won't share the exact recipe for this one, but I will give you a list of what I used because there is nothing worse then stinky dog breath and every dog has their limit of mint they will eat.

Minty fresh dog biscuits.

Ingredients:

Fresh mint

Fresh Parsley

whole wheat flour

egg

water

oil and or grease (I find the dogs like either coconut oil or bacon grease the most)

Pumpkin Fruit Sticks (recipe)

I've been trying to work in a variety of fruits and veggies into the dog's diet. I tried to alter one of my recipes to get the dogs to eat fruit because fruit is good for them.  The dogs liked them, but I wasn't all that happy with this recipe.  The biscuits didn't get as hard as I would have liked. 

Ok so these ones don't look like sticks, but you can put them in a piping back and make them look like sticks.

Pumpkin and fruit sticks

Ingredients:

3TBS  Pumpkin (Canned or freshly cooked but no pumpkin pie filling)

1TBS  Each Powdered Milk, Bone Meal, & Fish Oil

2TBS  Nutritional Yeast

2TBS  Bacon Grease

1         Mashed Banana

2         Egg

½ C    Assorted diced fruit (blueberries, strawberries, and raspberries)

1         Orange squeezed (make sure you only use the juice and pulp but not seeds)

2C      Unbleached Whole Wheat Flour

Directions:

Preheat oven 300®

Mix all ingredients but flour in bowl until completely combined. 

Slowly add flour, mixing periodically.

Put into pastry bag and squeeze out onto parchment paper lined cookie sheet in long sticks. 

Bake for 10 minutes, or until cooked.

Let cool and serve up to puppies.

Dean's liver snacks

Well, I never got the pictures of my puppy-roni treats.  Really, they didn't turn out all that pretty, but the dogs sure loved them.  I decided it was time I tried out a new recipe for one of Dean's favorite foods.  Dean loves bacon and chicken liver.  Now, I've already done the bacon treats, and know the dogs go crazy over them.  I didn't actually use chicken liver in this new recipe.  We actually have a local butcher up here that mom and dad go to to get meat for the dogs.  It's a small place and much more humane than the factory crap you get in the store that's pumped full of hormones and such.  I'm not entirely sure what kind of liver it was, but we cooked it up in some water and I used the liquid and some diced and shredded liver in the dough.  Currently the dough is wrapped up and sitting in the fridge because it is way to hot outside to use the oven.  I'll have to get to that later tonight when it cools off.

Alright, so I also tried a glaze for the snacks.  It's just some egg white and 1 finely diced strawberry.  I was trying to make a red glaze, and I've heard that food colorings were bad for bogs so I just put the strawberry in.  Of course it turned slightly pink, but not red so I just topped it with pieces of the strawberry.  Interestingly enough my parents dog, a Husky Shepard mix, who only really likes meat loved these.  

Puppy-Roni Cookies (recipe)

Tried out a new recipe this week.  I do intend to post some of them eventually, and this will probably be one because I wouldn't want to make it all the time.  Actually I'm hoping to get my dog biscuits going as a business and selling them.  Of course I have to scrape together some money to get them tested and such so I can get the crude fat and such for the label.  As I doubt this will be one of the recipes I plan to use for that I'll be giving it out.

Puppy-roni cookies

Ingredients:

2 Pepperoni sticks (make sure they are not spicy I used the ones from Haggen's market street cafe)

1C   Warm Water

1     Egg

3tsp Powdered veggie mix (spinach, apple, carrot, mint, and parsley all which I've dried out and powdered)

3TBS  Nutritional Yeast

1tsp   Bone Meal  (now I've head too much of this can be bad,but I've also heard it good for dogs so don't use more than 1tsp in one batch)
3C   Unbleached Whole Wheat Flour

Directions:

First I cut up the pepperoni sticks and soaked them in the cup of warm water until soft

Preheat oven 300®

Pull pepperoni from water and mix all ingredients except flour and pepperoni in the water.

Ground up pepperoni in food processor, or mince as well as you can with a knife and then mix in with all other ingredients.

Slowly add flour, mixing periodically.

Roll out dough onto floured surface and cut into desired shapes.

Put ungreased cookie sheet.

Bake 20 to 30 minutes until biscuits are hard. 

Let cool then let puppies enjoy.         

Pictures to come soon.

Frostings

So I tried out one frosting recipe, but forgot to take some pictures.  It was Greek yogurt, egg whites, gelatin, and some powdered milk.  I first tried the frosting after they were baked, but it didn't harden like I wanted.  The next time I put it on before baking and it hardened a lot.  In fact the outside of those got really hard.  The next batch I might see if I throw it on right in the middle as see if that will work.

UPDATE:  I tried adding the frosting about halfway through baking, and it actually turned out pretty well.  Sadly the frosting didn't stay white, but I imagine if I had some pet friendly food coloring it would stay whatever color I use.  Of course I've heard that regular food coloring is bad for dogs.  I'll have to find something much more natural.

Frosting time!

So, I am going to be trying out a few frosting recipes today.  I'm going to stick with the cheesy bacon biscuits for that because they really make the dogs drool.  Tomorrow the library up here is having a bake sale and I want to take some of my biscuits down so people can get stuff for their puppies too.  I'll post more once I've tried a few frostings.