#100DaysOfFoodBlogging, Cooper's Corner, Recipes

Dog-Friendly PB Ice Cream Sandwiches

Peanut Butter Ice Cream Sandwich | getinmymouf.com

[This is post #026 towards #100DaysOfFoodBlogging, our goal to do 100 posts in 100 days as part of The 100 Day Project.]

A couple prefaces for this post:

1. These ice cream sandwiches are gluten free. Cool.

2. You can share them with your dog. Even cooler.

Last year for our pup’s birthday, we made him Peanut Butter PUPCakes. As expected, he devoured them and loved us forever and it was the greatest day of his life.

However, we tasted the pupcakes and immediately realized that they were not designed for humans. It wasn’t unsafe or anything, but it could have easily won the award for Worst Human Cupcake of 2014.

So, this year we wanted to make something for Cooper’s 5th birthday that not only he could enjoy, but something we wouldn’t want to immediately spit into a garbage can.

This isn’t a complex recipe and, to be honest, this is really just an excuse to post a few more dog pictures. But the peanut butter cookies are really good, so nothing was spit into the trash. In fact, I dropped part of my cookie on the floor and still ate it.

Oh and like I mentioned above, the cookies are gluten free, so even if you or your dog has Celiac Disease you can both still partake in the ice cream sandwich festivities.

Dog-Friendly PB Ice Cream Sandwiches

1 Cup Peanut Butter
1 XL Egg
1/2 Cup Sugar
1 Teaspoon Vanilla Extract
Vanilla Ice Cream, Frozen Yogurt, or Canine Sweet Potato Froyo

1. Preheat the oven to 350 degrees F. In a medium bowl, mix the peanut butter, sugar, vanilla and egg until well combined. Yep, it’s that easy.

2. Using a standard ice cream scoop, spoon level scoops of dough about 1-inch apart on a cookie sheet covered with parchment paper. If all goes to plan, you should end up with about 7 large cookies…which means you’ll have one available for snacking. Flatten the mounds with the tines of a fork, making a crosshatch pattern.

3. Bake until golden around the edges, about 13 to 15 minutes.

4. Allow to cool completely then fill with your favorite ice cream or frozen yogurt.

Want some more canine-friendly posts? Then check THESE out:

#100DaysOfFoodBlogging, Cooper's Corner

5 Foods That Excite Both Me and My Dog

Cooper the labradoodle | getinmymouf.com

[This is post #014 towards #100DaysOfFoodBlogging, our goal to do 100 posts in 100 days as part of The 100 Day Project.]

The internet is full of pictures of people who look like their pets, but my pup, Cooper, and I share something even more important than our looks: We are both highly motivated by food.

We both are more than willing to wag our tails at the mere mention of any of the foods below.

1. Meatballs

“Is…is…is…is that a bag of…MEATBALLS?!”

I won’t lie, I’m really proud that my dog knows the word “meatball.” Technically the ones that he eats are made for dogs by Milo’s Kitchen, but still..don’t take this away from me. Either way, he feels the same way I do when I unwrap a hot melty meatball sub. You know, where that one part of your brain releases happy juice to the other part (biologically speaking). When it comes to Milo’s meatballs, Cooper’s brain releases this happy juice in the form of drool. So, yes, our hardwood floors have a lot of water damage.

2. Chicken

“May I proceed to devouring the chicken in my bowl?”

Chicken is Cooper’s kryptonite, while fried Chicken is mine. I do generally restrain myself like an adult; however, Coop is still working on his willpower per the exhibits below.

Exhibit A: That time he pulled my friend’s chicken off his Chi-fil-a sandwich. He was a puppy and that sandwich was also delicious, so it’s hard to blame him. Yeah! In fact, Micah, you shouldn’t have left your sandwich unattended.

Exhibit B: Although pulling a chicken carcass out of the trash is a severe offense, it is also an impressive form of dedication. When’s the last time you’ve ever committed to something 100%? I’ve never pulled a carcass out of the garbage, but I have been hungry enough to consider dumpster diving behind Popeyes.

3. Ice Cream

“Ice cream is literally the best thing ever!”

We’ve already covered Cooper’s love of our local soft serve joint, Nathan’s Dairy Bar, but his infatuation with the cold creamy stuff doesn’t end there. We (and when I say “we” here I’m talking about the humans in the house) eat a lot of ice cream. Most days deserve to be capped off by a small bowl of ice cream (we’re constantly running out of spoons and bowls). As such, there will occasionally be a scoop of Jeni’s Splendid Ice Cream dropped into Cooper’s bowl. I think I’ve mentioned it before on this blog, but it’s at the point now that he doesn’t even need to hear the word “ice cream,” rather he will wake up from a COMPLETE slumber at the sound of the freezer door opening and a pint hitting the counter. It’s impressive. And he claims to not know how to fetch me my slippers…

4. Sweet Potato

“Totally regretting the fact that I know ‘stay’ right now.”

Conjuring up images of Thanksgiving, my mouth drools at the thought of sweet potatoes. Hell even outside of the holiday, I love them! Mashed, baked, roasted with chipotle pepper, casseroled with marshmallows. I’m there for them all. Although Coop won’t refuse a bit of our sweet potato froyo in his dog bowl, his preference is for the dried variety. I almost always try to keep one in my pocket when we go for walks, just in case he gets off leash. He won’t run away, but the second he tastes freedom he’s not likely to come back to the leash without running around taunting me for a few hours. It’s a fun game we play. However, one mention of “sweet potato” has him sitting in front of me so fast you’d think he was under the spell of a master hypnotist. Which, I can’t blame him for, ’cause I respond the same way when Thanksgiving dinner is ready.

5. Cheese

“It’s…on…my…paws.”

Who doesn’t love cheese? I’m mildly lactose intolerant and I love the stuff! Extra cheese on my pizza, double slices on my sandwiches, heck give me a bottle of wine and wheel of gouda and I’m good-a for dinner. Yikes. Puns aside, we keep a container of grated Parmesan in our fridge not for us, but for Cooper. Maybe it makes us terrible dog-guardians, but he prefers a little grated parm on his food. And the saltiness of the parm does pair nicely with his Eukenuba Large Breed Adult Dry Dog Food. He also recently discovered (while we were making these tacos) his love for cotija and queso fresco.

Disclaimer: If we mentioned a brand, it is only because we actually use it. No money or goods hath exchanged hands or paws.

Cooper's Corner, Recipes

Canine Sweet Potato Froyo

Remember the first time when two of your favorite foods were combined in a way that BLEW YOUR FREAKING MIND?

Bacon on a doughnut? Boom.
Fried egg on a burger? Boom.
Indian spiced pumpkin chicken enchiladas from Avatars in Sausalito, California. BOOM. BOOM. BOOM? (let me hear you say wayo)

Well, it’s only fair that my furry friend, Cooper, has that same experience. And yes, I realize that he’s a dog and probably has his mind blown every time I drop a potato chip on the floor, but let’s pretend for a second that his palate is sophisticated enough to appreciate the effort.

Essentially everything Cooper does is somehow tied to the hope that he will receive either a dried sweet potato or ice cream. If the freezer door is opened and a paper ice cream container hits the counter, he will wake from a solid REM sleep and sprint into the kitchen to stare at me until his bowl is filled with that sweet vanilla cream. And for the former, I never have to worry about him running away when he’s off-leash because a simple shout of “Sweet Potato” will bring him running away from even the coveted buffet of goose poop that is our backyard. (Unfortunately, if a burglar ever breaks into our house and he has one of those delicious treats, Cooper would likely help him carry out our television.)

So, with these two powers combined, I give you: Sweet Potato Froyo. Not super exciting, I know… But, it’s easy, cheaper than those over-priced “dog” ice cream cups, and your pup won’t know that it’s technically not ice cream.

I saw this recipe for Frozen Yogurt Dog Treats on the Two Barking Dogs blog and realized that making “ice cream” for dogs is as easy as freezing Greek yogurt.

You can taste it yourself if you want, but like the Peanut Butter PUPcakes, it doesn’t really taste all that great to us humans. Luckily your dog won’t care and he or she will love you forever into eternity.

If you’re wondering whether or not Cooper actually ate from the plate above, the answer is “no.” I did try, but he just couldn’t wrap his head around this weird “flat bowl” contraption and just walked away. Upon placing the froyo in a proper bowl, he devoured it so fast that he didn’t have time to realize that it wasn’t really ice cream.

CANINE SWEET POTATO FROYO

Makes 12 cupcake-sized treats

1 Cup Milk
1 15 oz can Sweet Potato Purée
2 cups Plain Greek Yogurt
1 Tablespoon Honey
1 Teaspoon Cinnamon

Combine all ingredients in the bowl of your choice. I prefer glass for no particular reason at all.
Line a muffin pan with cupcake liners, fill each to the top with the froyo mixture, freeze, and enjoy.
Once fully frozen (about 3 hours), remove the froyo filled liners from the pan with a little warm water. Seal in a ziplock bag in your freezer for easy storage and quick access.*

*So here’s the thing about paper cupcake liners and frozen yogurt, they stick together. But, no worries. Just run the liners under warm water and they peel right off. Even if they didn’t, let’s be honest, your dog would eat them anyway.

Cooper's Corner, Recipes

Peanut Butter PUPcakes

On May 7th, our monster-dog, Cooper turned 28 in “dog years.” He won’t get to have a 30th birthday because the silly dog years calculation doesn’t allow it (well technically you could divide 30 dog years by 7 and get 4.28571 human years, which is approximately 4 years and 3.36 months, which would put us near the beginning of August, but then you have to figure out leap years and then try and fit all that info on an invitation and it’s all just TOO MUCH)…anyway, Tina decided to make him some “pupcakes” to help ease him into adulthood.

Part of the hope was that she would make cupcakes specifically for him and that we, as humans, might also enjoy them.

Nope.

Not even a little. They sure look pretty, though.

When figuring out food sharing between humans and canine companions, there are three simple rules of thumb:

To dogs, human food tastes like the-best-thing-ever-OMG.
To humans, dog-friendly food tastes like garbage.
Oh and to dogs, garbage also tastes like the-best-thing-ever-OMG.

“It’s my birthday? Awesome! Hey, what’s a birthday?”

In actuality, all cupcakes (except chocolate) already are pupcakes, because dogs will eat and love anything we eat. Really, we should call regular cupcakes human pupcakes, because we’re the ones with the sophisticated palates who demand a certain quality in our desserts. Dogs aren’t asking for anything special! Cooper would be just as happy eating the banana cupcakes that I stuffed my face with last night. Hell, he’d eat a bag of flour if we let him. But we didn’t give him the banana cupcakes. Why?

Because sometimes it just feels nice to make something special for your dog. And although he’ll never fully grasp the idea behind it (or the idea of birthdays in general), he does appreciate the effort (even if his appreciation level for you making a pupcake is equivalent to you arriving home from work, “OMG-you’re-home-from-work-you’re-the-best-ever”). That’s why dogs are so great, because they love everything, even when we don’t.

“OMG-I-Don’t-Know-What-A-Birthday-Is-But-I-Love-It!”

PEANUT BUTTER PUPCAKES RECIPE

Cupcakes

Tina found a pretty simple Doggie Birthday Cake recipe from Allrecipes.com for the cake and made a frosting (below) out of peanut butter and cream cheese. It’s a small batch and only makes five cupcakes, but your dog probably doesn’t need to eat more than five anyway. And YOU won’t be eating any…

Frosting

8 oz cream cheese, softened
1/2 cup peanut butter

Directions: Mix with a hand or stand mixer until smooth. Then, pipe onto cupcakes with a pastry bag/tip.

Misc Recipe Notes:

It’s been a full 24 hours and Cooper hasn’t climbed the stairs to our room and vomited on our bed, so I think we’re in the clear digestion-wise.
If you hate your co-workers, whip up a batch of these and leave them in the break room. Make sure to stand there and watch everyone eat them, so they have to lie to your face and tell you they’re delicious. Fun times.
Seriously, though they weren’t that bad. I’d liken them to a sugar-free peanut butter coffee cake with a savory peanut butter cream cheese frosting. Sounds horrible, right?

Get in my Mouf

Food Stories

Dog-Friendly PB Ice Cream Sandwiches

5 Foods That Excite Both Me and My Dog

Canine Sweet Potato Froyo

Peanut Butter PUPcakes