{RECIPE} Peanut Butter Banana and Carob Christmas Treats

One month until Christmas, furfriends! In prepping our holiday posts this year, I couldn't resist experimenting with a few plunger cookie cutter recipes so I could play with my Christmas plungers, but this dough works well with standard cutters or as a simple ball-and-flatten treat. This dense fudgey dough worked great for cutting, and the dogs loved the irresistible combination of banana, peanut butter, and carob. Drool!

{RECIPE} Peanut Butter Pumpkin Dog (Trick or) Treats

Mmmm....pumpkin! Harvest is here for our northern furfriends and with it the silly season of all things pumpkin (and pumpkin spice), but here in New Zealand we like to enjoy pumpkin all year round. Pumpkin is delicious and nutritious, and we like to keep some cooked cubed pumpkin on hand in the freezer for quick and convenient use in baking/cooking for both humans and dogs.

{RECIPE} Peanut Butter Pumpkin Dog Cake with Blueberries

This dog-friendly pumpkin and peanut butter cake is an easy pawty recipe if you'd prefer a more traditional cake or cupcake/pupcake to a meatloaf-style doggy cake. With yummy pumpkin, delicious nutritious blueberries, and a hint of irresistible peanut butter it is doggone droolworthy. You might even be tempted to taste test a piece yourself. We don't make cake treats very often around here - birthdays mostly, but also occasionally for special events and (of course) as part of our recipe development/testing. Whenever there is pupcake, our boys get VERY excited!

{RECIPE} Peanut Butter Gummy Dog Treats

Mmm...peanut butter!  That smell is so doggone irresistible!  When I first tried to use peanut butter in a gummy treat, it didn't work out quite as smoothly as I had hoped.  Peanut butter can be tricky to melt uniformly into a water-based gelatin mixture. Peanut butter is already an emulsion, and the usual emulsifier melting points are warmer than the ideal heating point for gelatin gummy making (overheating reduces the setting strength). So I put my human cooking knowledge and nerdy skills to use on a revised method. These treats split the prepwork, making it easy to create a nice uniform peanut butter gelatin mix that sets beautifully.  Yay!  Here's how they're made:

{RECIPE} Super Simple DIY Dog Treats Using Coconut Oil

If you're into supplementing your dogs with coconut oil, here are two of the doggone easiest ways to turn that supplement into treats.  Like my love of gelatin gummies, coconut oil based treats are low-guilt treat in our house, turning dietary supplements into occasional small treats. Win win! I find making simple refrigerated coconut oil treats particularly handy in summer time when coconut oil has a tendency to be liquid at cupboard temperature in many homes (our place included).

{RECIPE} Golden Oldie Birthday Bone Stamped Dog Treats

Oli's Golden Oldie 12th birthday treats all had a gloriously golden theme, but the busy baking kitchen still needed to smell moderately acceptable (unfortunately) to humans who might be sprung upon us at short notice for property viewings.  For these stamped birthday treats, I adapted our favourite basic roll-and-cut peanut butter dough recipe to smell even better (although the basic recipe smells pretty great as is) and look glorious golden.

{RECIPE} Carrot and Peanut Butter Dog Birthday Cookies

{RECIPE} Pumpkin + Peanut Butter Cake with Yogurt Frosting

It's not really a birthday party without a cake, is it? In the words of Julia Child, "a party without cake is just a meeting." and while we do enjoy meetings with doggone delicious snacks, barkday parties with dog-friendly cakes are far superior. :)  Our dog birthday cakes are usually meatloaf-style creations, but for Oli's barkday pawty this year I decided to make meatballs as a side and bake a "real" cake instead.

DIY Stamped Dog Treats (Plus Peanut Butter Bacon Bones!)

Santa Paws brought all sorts of interesting little goodies for crafting and baking (clearly the elves had read our post with Christmas Gift Ideas for Dogs and Dog Lovers) including a set of DIY alphabet cookie stamps. I have a number of cute cookie stamps and presses in my baking stash, including a set of larger letters, but these mini letters are perfect for using on smaller treats and are just the right size for my favourite bone-shaped cookie cutter.

{RECIPE} Bacon Bunny and Bones Easter Dog Treats

Mmmm...bacon bunnies! These treats combine the doggone irresistible scent/taste of bacon with yummy peanut butter and blackstrap molasses to make a naturally brown treat.  The Easter treat tags and labels you see in the pictures will be shared here on Monday as our final pre-Easter post this year. Woofs!

{RECIPE} Peanut Butter and Carob Coconut Oil Easter Treats

Is anyone else a sucker for peanut butter and chocolate? It's one of my personal favourite (human) treat combos, so I couldn't resist combining them into a peanut butter chocolate egg inspired Easter treat.  The treats were created in layers, as shown, but can also be created as a homogeneous mix  if you prefer, or you can adapt to make without the carob and/or peanut butter to suit your dog's sensitivities, palette, and/or your own personal preferences. Easy peasy!  My dogs both enjoy coconut oil straight-up too!

{RECIPE} Carob Peanut Butter Cinnamon Heart Dog Treats

Pucker up, valenpups!  These no-bake treats combine the irresistible flavours and scents of carob and peanut butter with breath freshening cinnamon and coconut oil. Smooches for pooches?  Count us in!

{RECIPE} Molasses "Kiss" Carob Drop Dog Treats

Delicious peanut butter with a hint of blackstrap molasses and a droolworthy carob drop "kiss" make these downright irresistible to my boys. Meet me under the mistletoe! Puppy kisses for kisses accepted.

{RECIPE} Peanut Butter and Carob Christmas Dog Treats

"Chocolate" and peanut butter? Doggone irresistible! These treats swap the chocolate for dog-friendly carob as a delicious adaptation of our smooth roll-and-cut peanut butter dog treat recipe. This dough handles well for roll-and-cut treats, but if you're looking for a quick and easy alternative, you can use fork flattened balls or go for our simple no-rolling DIY dog treat method.

{RECIPE} Peanut Butter and Molasses Christmas Dog Treats

It's beginning to smell a lot like Christmas, and these treats smell almost good enough to temp a few human taste-testers. A little splash of blackstrap molasses and sprinkle of spice jazzes up our smooth roll-and-cut peanut butter dog treat recipe with a gingerbread-inspired holiday boost of scent and flavour. That dough works so well for simulating a cookie-dough texture that I wanted to play with it for my new Christmas plunger-cutters (I couldn't resist buying them...) and it worked very nicely! Since we were making gingerbread treats, I used only the gingerbread person plunger from the set and creating some matching gingerbread houses.  Here's how they were made. 

{RECIPE} Smooth Roll-and-Cut Peanut Butter Dog Treats

Did you know that November is Peanut Butter Lovers Month? Oh yeah...we LOVE our peanut butter! In honour of peanut butter lovers everywhere and in preparation for some fun variations on this base recipe used in our upcoming holiday posts, we're sharing our smooth roll-and-cut peanut butter dog treat dough. Yummy!

{RECIPE} Black Cat Cookies | Halloween Dog Treats

Meow!  These black cat cookies are a fun little Halloween treat for doggies who happen to cross their paths.  Bad luck?  Perhaps for the cats...hehe...  We've shared an easy biscuit dog option below, but these can easily be made using your favourite roll/cut favourite dog treat recipe or adapted as human cookies.

{RECIPE} Banana Apple Cinnamon Dog House Cookies

This week we have a special mini-series of posts for you all about sharing your home with pets.  Of course, we couldn't miss our weekly Monday treat, so today we have edible dog house cookie! The biscuit dough can, of course, be baked into any other shapes you please and it smells fantastic whilst baking. Pawfect!  

{RECIPE} Molasses & Peanut Butter "Gingerbread" Dog Treats

Blackstrap molasses gives these treats a rick brown colour and fabulous smell, reminiscent of real gingerbread. Quality blackstrap molasses is rich in nutrition (for humans and animals) and some folks believe it can help dogs with arthritis and mobility, immune system strength, and heart health. Our dogs love the smell, so I set out to bake a tasty treat with a boost of molasses.

{RECIPE} Homemade Dog Easter Egg Carob Treats

Today's recipe is ridiculously simple, but insanely dogliscious (and cute too!).  These DIY dog Easter egg "chocolates" were made using an Easter silicone candy mold, but you can use any mold including re-purposing a simple ice-cube tray (preferably flexible for ease of removal) or just make a "chocolate" bark and crack/cut into smaller pieces after hardening. Either way, expect to have very excited dogs circling around your kitchen.