What’s that, sniffer dogs? Smells like meatball, but looks like pupcake? Right on both counts! These chicken and kurmara (sweet potato) pupcake dog treats are playing tasty tricks, pawty animals. Unlike a conventional cake or pupcake that uses ingredients in a batter to create rise, this dense moist meatball mix is shaped and baked as look-alike pupcakes. It’s a cute (and very easy) way to turn a favourite meatball dog treat recipe into a party pupcake, or to bake special puppy party treats for dogs who might have issues with some of the ingredients in a conventional batter. Into the kitchen we go, furfriends!
What the Woof is Kumara?
Kumara is sweet potato, for our non-kiwi furfriends. It’s a very healthy food for most people and pups, but we don’t use it very often in our personal dog treat baking since Humphrey has other favourites that are better-suited to his heart-health snack plan. But these treats were mostly baked for sharing with other pups, including delivery to a furfriend who has some special allergy issues.
The humans in our household love kumara, and we grow it in our summer garden along with lots of other fruits and veggies. Momma’s favourite is purple, but orange is far more readily available in markets and shops, especially for our overseas furfriends. Swapping the kumara for cooked and pureed dog-friendly veggies like carrot or pumpkin will result in a similar treat, in both consistency and colour. You can also leave it out (recipe volume will be less and texture will change).
Mixing Things Up with Meatballs
As we shared in Humphrey’s 11th birthday party post, we had playdate furfriends visiting with us on Humphrey’s birthday. There was scheduled pool construction work going on at a nearby property (hooray for good neighbours giving advanced warning of stinky fumes), so we needed to have mostly indoor fun, including helping out as sous chefs baking birthday treats.
For sharing with his birthday guests and other friends, we baked this batch of mini-muffin chicken and kumara pupcakes. These treats are easy to bake and handle really well, making them a great option for sharing, gifting, and/or storing for later snacks. We also baked his birthday carrot cake, but left that for decorating and serving the following day.
Normally, I would just bake meatball treats in small balls on a baking sheet, but since we were in party mode, I adapted from the usual hand-rolled balls and used a mini-muffin pan to shape and bake these treats to be more like little party pupcakes. It’s a very quick and easy variation if you’d like to mimic the shape of a risen cupcake or muffin treat without using a rising batter.
You can use this method with most of our meatloaf and meatball-style dog treat recipes, noting the adaptations in the recipe and instructions below to help make the batter smoother for shape. There are also tips for ingredients swaps to suit you and your pup. And if you’d rather skip the tricks and bake rising pupcakes, there are conventional dog-friendly cake recipes in our archives, too.
Chicken and Sweet Potato (Kumara) Meatball Pupcakes
Mixing Meatball-Style Dog Treats
My go-to-base for making meatballs is wholegrain oats, lean ground meat, and egg. From there, it’s easy to add in different dog-friendly ingredients that your pup enjoys or slip in specific extras to suit special diets or boost specific nutrients. You’ll be baking the treats, so don’t add anything heat sensitive or that you’d prefer to feed fresh/raw. Although you could adapt the shaping method below to prep and freeze raw meatball muffin look-alikes, if you have a raw-fed dog. But be extra careful, especially with mince.
For the meatball pupcakes here, we’re taking the extra prep step of coarsely grinding our oats. That helps to make the mixture smoother and sturdier for shaping and mimicking the form of a risen mini-muffin. We’re also adding cooked pureed kumara (sweet potato). In addition to further smoothing, it bulks out the volume, adds to the yum factor, and gives a boost of colour.
Making Look-Alike Meatball Mini-Muffin Pupcakes
In addition to the usual baking equipment, you’ll need a mini-muffin pan (affiliate link) if you’d like to make mini-muffin treats. The mixture can be baked in other shapes and sizes, noting again that the muffin-top rise here is faked, so there is no need to leave room for expansion. Nor do you need to fake the tops if you’d rather a flatter baked treat. It is an intentionally moist mix, so if you would like to hand shape it into meatballs, it will be very soft. You can use extra oats, less kumara, or otherwise adjust to suit.
Chicken and Sweet Potato Pupcake Recipe
Chicken and Kumara (Sweet Potato) Meatball Mini-Muffin Dog Treats
Ingredients:
- Approximately 300-400g lean ground chicken (or other meat of your preference)
- 1 egg
- 1 cup wholegrain oats
- Dog-friendly herbs or seasonings (optional)
- 1 large kumara (sweet potato) or rough equivalent
As noted above, you can swap your favourite dog-friendly ingredients into the recipe above, but be conscious of moisture and size/texture. Wet ingredients may make your mixture softer and/or need extra oats to soak up the juices and bake firm. Anything coarse or chunky might make the mix more difficult to shape or make the finished pupcakes more likely to crumble. As detailed below, we’re doing extra prep on both the oats (coarse grind) and kumara (cooked and pureed) for a smoother mixture. I like to use my mini food processor (affiliate link) for small jobs like this rather than setting up (and cleaning up) my full-sized food processor.
Making the Meatball Mixture:
- Preheat your oven to 180C (or local equivalent) and gather together your ingredients and tools.
- Wash your kumara (sweet potato). Cut into small pieces, cook, and allow to cool. Kumara can be boiled or (as shown) microwaved. I often to put a plate over the bowl when microwaving as a very convenient easy-clean zero-waste cover. Note: Peeling is optional. Like many fruits and veggies, the peel is nutritious. But it is also tougher to puree smoothly. It’s easy with a food processor after cooking, but in your mashing by hand, it can be a problem.
- Measure the oats and coarsely grind using a food processor (affiliate link) or alternative method.
- Combine the chicken, egg, and add-in seasonings (optional) in a mixing bowl. Add the prepared oats, then set aside while you re-use the food processor for the kumara. No need to wash first since its all going to be mixed together after anyway – easy as!
- Puree the prepared kumara until smooth.
- Combine the kumara puree with the other ingredients. Mix thoroughly.
- Rest briefly (optional) to let moisture soak into the oats before shaping.
Shaping and Baking the Treats:
As noted above, these treats are tricksters. Unlike a conventional cake-style batter, the meatball mix will not rise when baked. Instead, we will be overfilling and hand shaping the tops of these special puppy party treats to mimic the form of a baked muffin or cupcake/pupcake. Don’t worry. This trick is very very easy, and you’ll be on to baking and snacking in no time.
- Lightly oil your mini-muffin pan.
- Over fill the mini-muffin holes with meatball mix. At this stage, the tops of the meaty mixture will be rough and uneven looking.
- Wet your working hand with water, and gently smooth and round the tops to take on the appearance of a baked risen muffin. You can add or remove some of the mix if any of your pupcakes look a little over or under sized, and then reshape if/as needed. Although, as always, the dogs won’t be judging your finished treats based on looks, just on scent and taste.
- Bake for approximately 20 minutes (time will depend on size and moisture), until cooked thoroughly. If you’d like extra browning, you can switch the oven up to broil briefly at the end of the baking process (optional).
- Cool to a safe temperature before any taste testing. Then it’s time to party! As with most meaty treats, these can be kept in the fridge short-term, and frozen for long-term storage. See additional tips and tricks below.
Pupcake Pawty Time!
Tricks for tricky pupcake treats? Humphrey and furfriends say yes, please! As noted in his birthday post, pawfessional poser Humphrey knows that party hats usually mean something special, fun, tasty, or all of the above are about to happen. His furfriends just know that Humphrey’s mom is doggone crazy, but will follow along and strike a pose if there is a chance of treats, haha!
In addition to sampling the celebration snacks, we also packed up little party snack boxes of chicken pupcakes and delivered them to other special neighbour furfriends. I don’t even remember where or when I bought these cute little polka dot takeaway boxes, I see these things and I have to buy them haha, but they were perfect for post-pawty snack delivery. I put a little bit of baking paper into each box as a liner before adding the pupcakes to help keep everything clean and pretty.
Recipe and Ingredient Tips and Tricks
- Meatball style dog treats don’t have a special post in our help section, but our pet chef help post on dog-friendly cakes may be able to give you a helping paw in the kitchen as it covers similar styles of snacks, like meatloaf cakes, just on a larger scale.
- I like using wholegrain oats when I make meatball dog treats, but they’re a bit chunky. With any of our other meatball recipes, if you’re wanting smaller mini-meatballs or a smoother mixture, you can whiz them briefly in your food processer (affiliate link) into a coarse homemade oat flour like we did for these meatball pupcakes.
- Freezing extras? I like to pre-freeze moist treats like these on a lined plate or baking pan so that they don’t stick together in the freezer. Once the treats are frozen firm, you can transfer them into a container or freezer bag for easy free-flow snacks.
- Cool meaty treats are still tasty, but pampered pooches might enjoy their treats warmed slightly for extra scent and flavour.
Hungry for more tasty treats? There are all sorts of homemade dog treat ideas in our blog archives. You can use the categories and tags to find recipes that might be of interest, or use our internal search tools to sniff out something specific. Remember, treats (bought or homemade) are for spoiling your pup in moderation. We share ideas from treats that we’ve made ourselves for our pets, but different animals have different preferences (likes/dislikes), just like people. Some pets may have special dietary requirements and/or food allergies/intolerances. If you are ever in doubt or have questions about what’s suitable for your pet, have a chat with your trusted vet.
