Peanut Butter Banana Cookies!

Hi everyone! Mama and Gramma have been making a lot of Christmas cookies lately. So Mama decided we should have some special Christmas cookies! (At least the dogs among us.* Mama still hasn't found a good recipe for kitty treats. Does anyone know of any?) 


Mama found a recipe on Bullwrinkle.com. Here is the recipe she used:

Ingredients

½ cups water(add more water later if required)
½ cup oil
2 eggs
3 tablespoons peanut butter
2 tsp. vanilla
2 cups flour
½ cup cornmeal
½ cup oats

Directions

Blend wet ingredients together. Whisk dry ingredients together and mix into wet mixture to form a ball of dough. Roll out and shape. Put onto a non-stick cookie tray or lightly greased one. Cook 20 minutes at 400 F. Turn off oven and allow the biscuits to cool in oven until crisp and hard. Store in airtight container. 

Mama only made a few changes here. First, she didn't have any cornmeal, so she used extra flour instead. (She Googled it first and found out this was fine.) Second, we had some overripe bananas in the house, so Mama mashed one up and added it in. 


Finally, Mama used a cookie cutter to make gingerbread man shapes for us! The only problem was, she couldn't find a rolling pin, so she tried to use the jar of peanut butter to roll out the dough. The result was that instead of lots of thin cookies, we had about ten really thick cookies! Thats fine with us, since Mama only lets us eat a little piece at a time anyway. 


Here is a picture of our super-thick "gingerbread men" with no gingerbread in them! 

Since its Christmas, Mama thought she'd turn some of these cookies into Christmas gifts. (What? We don't get to keep all of our cookies? Boo, Mama!!!) So she put a few in bags. We are sending three to our cousin Judah in California, and bringing two to our second cousins Rocky and Nugget on Christmas Eve. Also Mama packaged up three for our very favorite neighbor dogs, Andi, Betty and Finn! Here is what the cookies looked like, packaged nicely by Mama. 

We got to taste the cookies and we were so happy! Mama tasted one also and she said they were kind of bland. She said it was because there was no sugar, and she's considering adding a little brown sugar in the next batch. We think they're fine, though! No blander than our usual Milk Bones! 


We love it when Mama bakes for us! So we asked her a question. We all got together and suggested to her that she make her baking a monthly thing! We thought that, every month, whether she likes it or not, Mama should bake some delicious treats for us. And she agreed! She said we can try out a new dog recipe every month, and blog about it here! Mama says she actually loves to bake, but her treats for humans don't always work out so well (for instance, every time she tries to make chocolate chip cookies, they come out puffy, dry and bland) and she thinks pets are much easier to please than people. 


Next we told Mama, maybe she could start a whole new business! It could be called the Pet Treat Of The Month Club! People could subscribe, and each month she'd send them a bag of homemade dog treats. We'd become rich! And she could quit her job and stay home with us full time, baking and baking and baking! 


Mama told us our imaginations were getting a little out of control.


Anyways, we sure do like our peanut butter banana "gingerbread" men! We can hardly wait for Mama to bake something else next month! (Lets just hope she doesn't forget.) 


*We have to edit this part because later Mama did give Sammy-Joe a small, kitty-sized piece of one of these, and he happily ate it! 

Smarty Sunday: How To Make Valentines Ice Cream Treats For Pets!

 Hi everyone! Welcome to Smarty Sunday, the feature of this blog where I show you something smart, like a book review, cool website, or news story about pets! 


Since Valentine's Day is tomorrow, Mama and I thought we'd show you how to make some delicious ice cream treats for pets. 


We did some research online and found a couple different recipes, but we adapted this one for what we had around the house. 


Mama found this heart shaped ice cube tray at Dollar Tree and she thought it would be perfect for our Valentine's Day treats! You don't need to use a heart shaped tray, if you don't have one. A regular ice cube tray would be fine.



"Uh.... what are you up to, Mama? Making anything good for me?"
"No, Lily, nothing at all. Scamper away and bark at the vacuum cleaner or something."

You will also need peanut butter, and yogurt. One variation is to use plain or vanilla yogurt, and add in mashed bananas. We are fresh out of bananas... and Trixie and Lily don't really like bananas anyway... so our Mama used strawberry banana yogurt. It doesn't really matter what peanut butter you use. Grampa loves Peter Pan, but I hear that choosy moms choose JIF, and that for good nutrition its hard to beat Skippy, and of course the regular store brand is probably fine too! Mama likes Dannon yogurt because they are having a contest where the foil on top of the yogurt has a letter on it, and if you collect the right letters to spell certain words, you win prizes. Mama is such a sucker for that kind of thing! But really, use whatever brand of yogurt you like. We've also read that some people like to add honey! 

Mix some of the yogurt in with a few spoonfuls of peanut butter. The amounts are not exact. Our Mama used about half a carton of yogurt, and three spoonfuls of peanut butter. You might need to use more of each, if you are making more, of course!

Now, all you have to do is spoon the mixture into the little compartments.

It might be a good idea to label the treats, so the humans know not to eat them. (Everything in the treats is okay for humans to eat... but do we want them to eat our treat? No way! Its ours! So, tell your human to label it!)

Finally, put them into the freezer! When they are frozen, they're ready to be enjoyed!
We can't wait to eat our delicious Valentine's Treats! I know Trixie and Lily will love them! I am not sure if I am a big fan of peanut butter, myself, but I'll find out. Mama said, fi I don't like it, she'll sneak me some tuna instead. :)


Happy Smarty Sunday, everyone!