Healthy Homemade Dog Cookies Recipe - Meat and Carrots - ヘルシーな犬用クッキーのレシピ

Today I made these cookies for Daisy. She loves them. Why don't you try them for your dog?

After mixing up the dough, I bake 1- 2 cookie sheets of them. Then I save a handful out for Daisy to eat right away and I freeze the rest. That way, I can give them to Daisy straight out of the freezer every now and then and not worry about spoilage. Invariably, I either don't have the time or the energy to bake up more than one or two sheets of cookies, so I also freeze some of the dough, so that I can bake more later when I have more time or energy. Just take the frozen dough out of the freezer when you want to bake more, defrost thoroughly, then roll out the dough and proceed as usual.

This recipe calls for shortening, but I use butter because in Japan, it's hard for me to get shortening (unless I go to a specialty store) and since I rarely use it, last time I bought some I used about 2 tablespoons then it sat in the cupboard until eventually, the whole can went bad and had to be thrown out. Butter seems to work just fine but you may prefer shortening for your dog. I used butter that had salt it in but it may also be better for your dog to use a no salt butter instead. I think it's probably best to avoid giving salt to your dog, from what I've heard, but I doubt the little bit in the butter is harmful, unless you know that specifically your dog should not have any salt due to some health condition.

Meat and Carrot Dog Cookies

Ingredients
2 1/2 cups sifted whole wheat flour
1/2 cup powdered milk (dry)
1 cube of bouillon, crumbled or 1 tablespoon powdered bouillon
1 cup cooked ground pork or pork and beef mixed
1 cup grated carrots
6 tablespoons shortening or butter
1 xtra large egg or 2 medium eggs
1/2 cup cold water

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees F (or 180-190 C) depending on your oven. Mine needs to be at 190 C.

Use a Silpat baking/cookie sheet or lightly oil a plain cookie sheet. Silpat works the best...if you don't have a Silpat baking sheet, get one! It's a fabulous and indispensable addition to your kitchen. I don't know how I ever lived without mine! Gone will be the days of burnt bottoms on your cookies or other baked items, not to mention, no sticking to the sheet.

In a large bowl, mix the flour, powdered milk and bouillon. Add the cooked meat, grated carrot, shortening and egg, while adding water gradually until you get a firm ball of dough. You may find you don't need the entire 1/2 cup of water.

Lightly flour your rolling surface and then roll out the dough to about 1/4 inch (0.5 cm) thickness. Use what ever design cookie cutters you desire (I used hearts) to cut out cookies and place them on the baking sheet. You can put them fairly close together, but not touching. They do not spread during baking.

When you make heart shaped cookies, I have found that pressing my finger lightly and making indentations at the top of the hearts makes them formed better (after peeling them off the rolling surface and placing them onto the Silpat in which they sometimes get malformed a bit) and it adds a cute texture when they are finished baking.

Press the tip of your finger lightly into each rounded top part of the heart to make an decorative indentation.

Keep re-rolling the dough scraps so you can use all the dough for cookies. If I have a little dough left at the end that I just can't get one more cookie out of, I form it into a small ball and flatten it out and bake it. The dog likes it the same as the heart shaped ones!

Put in the oven and bake for about 20-30 minutes, again depending on your oven. Alittle well done (but not with burnt edges) is fine as dogs like 'em crunchy. Cool and serve or freeze for serving later.

On the Silpat mat, in the oven and ready to bake!

You can probably safely keep the cookies or the dough frozen for up to 2 months. I am not an expert on this, it could be it would keep even longer, this is just my personal opinion based on experience.

Add Some Cheese!

Here is a photo of some cookies made in the shape of stars instead of hearts . Also, I added just a pinch of shredded cheese on top of each cookie before baking for an extra flavor treat (click on photo to enlarge and see the cheese more closely). You can see the cheese melted nicely while baking. I used a cheddar and jack cheese mix on these cookies, but you could put almost any kind of semi-hard cheese such as cheddar, mozzarella, gruyère, edam or jarlsberg.

ALOHA! AND ENJOY.....