Peanut Butter & Pumpkin Dog Treats

By Donna Black-Sword on Oct 25, 2019 • ( 0 )

Hands up … who loves Halloween? Holy black cats, I do. It’s my favorite time of year.

Going trick-or-treating as a kid is great, right? You get free stuff just for pretending to be someone else. But as an adult, this behavior is frowned upon. In fact, walking around the neighborhood in the dark on Halloween night without a kid or two will get you on the watch list.

Unless you have a dog with you. Dogs make you normal. It’s science.

Our first year as empty-nesters, we took the Jagerhund to stroll past the bi-levels in our neighborhood that were all festively tarted up with hanging skeletons and strobe lights. It brings me joy, it does. And boy, did we score that night. We came back home with a bottle of homemade wine, popcorn, and a full-size Snickers. Hashtag truestory.

And as good as we had it, Jager came out even better. Many of our dog-lovin’ neighbors were ready with a dog treat for our little pointy-headed dog.

Truth is though, I’m pretty picky about what my dogs eat. An occasional off-brand dog biscuit is fine, but there are certain ingredients that I avoid feeding my dogs. After more than twenty years in the pet food business, I’m a label reader. Banned ingredients in my home include meat by-products/bone meal (poultry by-products are good, tho), glycerin, corn syrup and other sugars, and any artificial coloring. And of course, I keep a sharp eye out for any human-grade products that contain Xylitol, such as certain kinds of peanut butter. (DYK? The artificial sweetener Xylitol is toxic to dogs.)

As an attempt to return the pay-it-forward generosity of our pet-friendly neighbors, I’ll have dog treats ready for any four-leggers that come our way on Beggar’s Night next week. And not some cornmeal-based treats for our furry visitors either. They’ll be treated with these beauties.

There are some dog blogs out there that share high quality recipes for dog treats; check out Shaggy Dog Eats ,who has published cookbooks, and My Brown Newfies for her Frosty Pumpkin Treats that she makes for her sensitive-stomach puppers.

The recipe I’m sharing with y’all comes from Kevin and Amanda, who run a food and travel website. They stepped away from their usual gnocci and scampi recipes and developed this dog treat for their two Bostons, Miley and Howie. And I’m glad they did.

That’s right. I accidentally got a peanut chunk to be an eyeball.
*Impressive*

These treats are pretty straight forward to make. Just three ingredients and ten minutes in the oven. I’m not much of a baker, so the only cookie cutters I have are dinosaurs, which are awesome. And who’s with me on this…I don’t own a rolling pin. I mean who has actually purchased one? If you do have one in your kitchen drawer, I’m giving it a guess that it was handed down to you, along with that mid-century era potato masher and electric skillet you were gifted from Great Aunt Tillie’s estate because you were the youngest unmarried grandchild when you were really holding out for her car with that insane low mileage. But that’s just a guess.

So, I don’t have a rolling pin. But you know what I do have? Ingenuity, that’s what. You can MacGyver the situation by using a wine bottle to roll out that cookie dough. If you don’t have a wine bottle, it’s like I don’t even know you. Same for the dinosaur cookie cutters. You’re on your own here.

Let me know if you try these and how they came out.

Or if you have a rolling pin. I’m curious about the rest of your life.