I found a great recipe on the Coconut & Lime blog site by Rachel Rappaport for Homemade Dog Biscuits, which I try to make once a month to feed my three hounds. They love them. REALLY love them. They’re wholesome. And it costs a fraction of the cost of buying dog treats at the supermarket.
The ingredients are:
- 2 cups whole wheat flour
- 2/3 cup cornmeal
- 1/2 cup rolled old fashioned oats
- 2 tablespoons canola oil
- 3/4 cup chicken stock
- 2 eggs PLUS 1 egg, beaten
Directions: Heat oven to 350 degrees. Line 3 baking sheets with parchment paper. In a large bowl, mix together all of the ingredients except for the beaten egg. The dough should easily form a ball and be rather firm. On a floured surface, roll out dough to 1/4 inch thick. Cut into shapes. Re-roll scraps (just once, any more and the biscuits will be tough) and cut out the remaining biscuits. Brush the tops of each biscuit with the beaten egg. Bake for 25-35 minutes or until golden brown and crisp. Remove to a wire rack and cool completely. Store in airtight container. Yields about 3 dozen.
I simplify the process of cutting the cookies by forgoing the cute shapes (as you can see by my photo below), and instead use a pizza wheel to slice the dough into rectangles (or whatever shape they come out–I’m working on my pizza-wheel skills). This also minimizes stiff dough. The results makes the perfect size treats to be snapped in to three different sizes for my small, medium, and large dogs. I also wind up with more like 6 dozen treat.
I overcook them by just a tad and allow a really long drying time so they stay extra crisp in the container.
An added frugal bonus is that I use eggs from our backyard hens, and since I weekly cook a whole chicken, and then simmer the chicken carcass and other bits and pieces into a tasty broth that I use to mix in with dog meal instead of canned food, I always have a murky chicken broth handy.
Happy Anniversary Coconut & Lime! A fantastic blog for original recipes with a let’s-just-try-it attitude. Check it out. My latest fav is adding strawberries from my garden every time I cook with asparagus, which was inspired by Coconut & Lime’s Strawberry-Asparagus salad.
