On August first, I get out of bed ready to put on a hoodie and drink a pumpkin spice latte before shopping for Halloween decorations. I know it’s insanely premature, but it happens to me every year. Thankfully, the love of my life took me to get a pumpkin spice latte already (thank you Dunkin’ Donuts!), but I didn’t find the fall goodies I was hoping for and it was about 50 degrees too hot to think of a hoodie. Oh well. At least I can bake fall goodies anytime I want.
This time, I decided to make treats for my puppies. I baked some fall human cookies that were delicious, but this is the recipe I am really proud of. I researched dog safe ingredients and I came up with this recipe on my own. I think it has all the elements of fall, plus bacon! My family’s pups all loved these and I love how they turned out. Whether you bake these now or wait for the actual first day of fall, I hope you love making these as much as I did!
Making sure everything is thoroughly combined is super important. Once the flour gets incorporated, the dough gets pretty stiff, so I like to add the flour last. To come up with these ingredients, I thought about what flavors I think of when I think fall, and I came up with pumpkin, apple, and cinnamon. Luckily, those are all dog safe. I find peanut butter fitting for every season so that isn’t really fair, but I of course added it anyway. I also think of oats, but I admittedly don’t think of molasses, which ended up being an ingredient in these. I read it can be good for dogs so I decided to include it since it seemed to fit with the theme.
While I was mixing my wet ingredients, I decided to add some real bacon in. I find turkey bacon is super lean, and when you microwave it on a paper towel, there is almost no grease left and it crumbles really easily. We have a pretty powerful microwave, over 1,000 watts, so I decided to microwave this for 2 minutes and 45 seconds. It looked nice and crisp, but not burnt.
Once you have your wet ingredients mixed, add in the baking powder and cinnamon to make sure they get thoroughly combined into the dough.
Now it’s time to start adding in the bigger pieces before we get to the flour. I crumbled the bacon up as well as I could with my fingers. I wanted it to be nice and fine since this is a roll out/cut out dough. There were some chunks in there that were larger than I would have wanted, but they didn’t really cause too much of a problem. I crumbled them straight into the dough, but next time, I intend to crumble them in a bowl first so I can crush up the larger chunks. After adding the bacon and oatmeal, I realized my canine friends would be having a better breakfast than me!
Now it’s time to give those arms a workout! Flour is never easy to incorporate, but it turned out having an amazing texture once I was rolling everything out. I can never seem to stir all the flour in, I always have to turn the dough out and knead it all in. I also broke a spatula, so I recommend the kneading method when it gets too tough to stir!
Now it’s time to roll it out. I worked in small batches, rolling out 1/4 or 1/3 of the dough at a time, and adding more dough into the scraps until there was no more. I always laugh because I have so much fun with roll out treats for dogs, but I despise roll out people treats. I made cutout cookies a few times with my mom and my grandma as a child and I never liked the process. I think it’s because this dough is so much easier to work with and so forgiving.
Also, parchment paper! It makes this a breeze. The treats slide off- no greasing involved! Plus you can keep reusing it for the whole process since this makes a few sheets full.
It’s hard to say how many it makes because of the varying size of cookie cutters, but this made well over 150 treats for us. This is definitely a recipe that makes plenty to share with your canine friends! I know our three girls loved these.
Fall Extravaganza Dog Treat Recipe
Ingredients:
- 1 c. NATURAL peanut butter ( make sure it doesn’t contain xylitol!)
- 1 c. unsweetened applesauce
- 3/4 c. pumpkin puree
- 2 T. molasses
- 1 tsp. cinnamon
- 1 tsp. baking powder
- 4 strips turkey bacon, cooked and crumbled (optional)
- 1 1/2 c. oats
- 3 c. whole wheat flour (I use King Arthur)
Preheat oven to 350. Recipe makes 150+ treats
Note: Be mindful that bacon doesn’t stay good for very long, so keep the bulk of these treats frozen and refrigerate a few at a time for your pup to enjoy.
In a very large mixing bowl, add the first four ingredients and mix well. Next, mix in your baking powder and cinnamon. When all is thoroughly combined, crumble in the bacon, if you decided to use it, along with your oatmeal. Mix everything together and add in your flour. I added it all at once and worked it in slowly. It gets too stiff to stir together completely, so I always turn it out and knead it on the counter until it all comes together.
Once your dough is all ready, take out 1/3 of the dough and roll it out to about 1/4 inch thick on a smooth, clean surface. Cut as many shapes out as you can and place them on a parchment lined cookie sheet and bake them for 18-20 minutes.
Take the scraps of dough and combine them with another chunk of dough to roll out and cut into shapes. Repeat this process until all your dough is gone and you have tons of delicious and healthy treats for your pup or puppy friends.
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