Pawsome Pretzels

I probably have over 2,000 cookie cutters. You think with all those, I’d be some fabulous cookie decorator, right? I wish. Honestly though, cookie decorating intimidates me. And what usually happens is that I get so frustrated from messing up so many times that I eat the cookies. Yet, I still try and try again. I’m getting there slowly (very slowly) with a lot of practice of making my cookies look somewhat appealing.

However, whenever I get the itch to bake something cute but I don’t want to eat inhale every cookie, I turn to dog treats. Although I could eat the dog treats because they are made with human friendly ingredients, they do not tempt me as much as sugar cookies do. 

With that being said, I picked up this cute, little Linzer pretzel cookie cutter from Sur La Table. I never had used this type of cutter before so the first one, I broke. The second one, I forgot to dry it after washing and it rusted. However, the third one I bought and works like a charm. 

I decided to use this cutter with the dog treats and I must say, they came out fairly cute. I used the recipe from my Shake your Shamrock dog cookies. From time to time, I’ll vary it up and instead of banana, I’ll use pumpkin instead. It’s an easy recipe and great for cookie cutting. The first time I made them, I melted carob and yogurt chips and drizzled them over the pretzels. I sometimes mix a little peanut butter with the yogurt chips or the carob as well for extra flavor. The second time I made them, I made them for 4^th of July to give to some of our doggy friends and used Wilton’s blue and red vanilla coating chips. All of these ingredients are dog friendly but do not overdo it. You do not want to put your pup in a sugar coma. I usually just drizzle a few of them and leave the rest plain.

These last about 2 weeks. I either store them in a zip loc container or a zip loc bag to maintain freshness. Now I did just get a food dehydrator so I’m excited to try that. I’ve heard I can get a shelf life of 3-6 months or longer by dehydrating the treats so we’ll see in the future how that works out.

Hope your pup enjoys them as much as my dog does!

Recipe: Pawsome Pretzels: Peanut Butter and Banana Dog Cookies

Adapted from Allrecipes.com

• 2 1/2 cups whole wheat flour
• 2 eggs
• 1 cups smashed banana
• 2 tablespoons peanut butter
• 1/2 teaspoon salt
• 1/2 teaspoon ground cinnamon
• 1 tablespoon honey

Directions

1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees F (175 degrees C).
2. Mix together the flour, eggs, peanut butter, banana, salt, honey and cinnamon in a bowl. Add water as needed to help make the dough workable and not crumbly, but the dough should be dry and stiff. Roll the dough out onto a flour surface, about 1/2 inch thick.  Use your favorite cookie cutter to cut out cookies. 
3. Bake in preheated oven until hard, about 40 minutes. 
4. Store in an airtight container for up to 2 weeks.