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. 

Bacon Cheesy bites

My dog loves bacon.  Personally I don't eat the stuff myself.  I'm a vegetarian, but I would never force my animals to be.  Every morning my dad has to share his bacon with my dog, and yes I know there are a lot of people who are against feeding their dogs table scarps, but I feel a small bit is alright.  I've been pondering how to throw something my dog loves into biscuits and came up with these.  I didn't use much bacon because of the salt factor, but I figure a couple pieced cooked and crumbled in a batch of 55 biscuits should be alright.  I also added some grated cheese because our dogs aren't lactose intolerant.  I do have to be careful in what I use for the biscuits since my mom's dog has seizures.  Of course he hasn't really had many since I started baking the biscuits and it's not loaded with corn and such.

The dough.

Here it's rolled out and being cut. You can see the small reddish specks of bacon in them.

All cut out and ready to bake.

Here are the three sizes for the different size dogs.

All done and ready to eat.

Yougut and bluberry biscuits.

Between my dog and all my parent's dogs we go through treats fast.  I've been reading random recipes online and discovered that you can make biscuits with yogurt.  I thought that actually sounded like a good idea, and whats better with yogurt then berries.  Of course mom and dad just so happen to have some blueberries on hand, and just because I hate them doesn't mean that my dog doesn't.  With all this in mind I got to work on some yogurt and blueberry biscuits.

Not the best picture I know, but I wasn't feeling very artistic that's mom's thing.

Chicken and Rice Biscuits

For my first pass on here, I've created chicken and rice dog biscuits.  OK, so mine aren't really chicken, but you can use whatever broth you have at hand at the time.  First I cooked the rice in the chicken broth and let it cool.  Once it's nice and cool and sticky I added it to the other flavor ingredients and some whole wheat flour and water.  As biscuit dough goes it came out relatively sticky so I couldn't roll it out like the other biscuits I've made.  Instead I made them just like drop cookies.  I also added a little bone meal for the older dog's joints. 

 As you can see Dean couldn't wait to have some. lol.