Our puppy Buford loves his peanut butter. He often refuses to eat his food unless there’s a little bit of peanut butter mixed in with it. These cookies are the perfect way to mix in a little bit of that flavor he loves without the slop that goes with feeding peanut butter to a dog with giant cheeks. They are also very excellent treats for being a good dog 🙂
If you’ve had a dog with big cheeks, or even a bushy beard, you understand what I’m talking about when I say “slop”. Whatever Buford eats or drinks stays on the generous surface area of his lips, cheeks and face. Those substances are ready and willing to be smeared on whatever his head comes in contact with including your pants, shirt sleeves and especially chairs at the dinner table. Peanut butter is a tad bit gooey-er than the average substance and it does not come out of clothes very easily. Don’t ask me how I know.
THOU SHALT NOT TOUCH MY COOKIES.
Rather than just cut off the messy peanut butter gravy train, I’ve kept stirring it into his kibble. He has trained me well. Also, I am a sucker for a pouty dog face. But I digress. These cookies are the perfect compromise: Buford gets his peanut buttery goodness without sharing it with the rest of us. After the cookies are cooled, I put half of them into a sealed container to use as treats. The other half is placed into a large zipper storage bag and pounded with the flat side of a meat mallet until they are pretty well pulverized. I put these in a separate sealed container and sprinkle the crushed cookies on Buford’s food for the week. I use about a tablespoon of these “sprinkles” on each dish of food, which roughly works out to a light coating across his whole food bowl. Peanut butter makes Buford almost as happy as tennis balls … shout out to my good friends at Kong for these supper rugged squeaky balls that survive months even with the beating my two give them.
These cookies are also a wonderful alternative to the treats you buy at the pet store. Even the “all natural” ones have some ingredients that I can’t identify, and I really don’t care for how many of them smell. With only four ingredients, all of which I would eat, I can feel good about making a healthful choice for my pooches. I usually break one cookie in half, and give one side to Buford and the other to his brother Finnegan.
Finnegan and Buford guard the oven while their cookies bake.
“Mom I think they are done!”
The first peanut butter cookie recipe I tried had far less peanut butter in it and yielded a softer cookie. Here in South Florida, where it is almost as hot and humid as an Amazon rainforest most of the year, those cookies had a shelf life of only a few days. They would get green and fuzzy before my two big boys could polish off a batch. So, after a good bit of tinkering, I have a crunchier and peanut buttery-er cookie that lasts much longer.
And if you’re in the market for more make-at-home canine goodies, check out our most popular recipe – Scoobys Organic Stew for Dogs
Ingredients
- 2 cups whole wheat flour
- 1 cup old fashioned oats
- 1 cup peanut butter
- 1 1/2 cup hot water
Instructions
- Preheat oven to 350 degrees, raise oven rack slightly above the middle of the oven.
- Mix all ingredients together. Batter will be thick and sticky. (I use my stand mixer)
- Grease 2 or 3 cookie sheets, and put a half cup of wheat flour into a small bowl to use in next steps.
- Using flour on your hands if necessary, roll batter into 1" balls. Place 2" apart on cookie sheets.
- Dip a fork into flour and push down on each ball twice to make an "x" and flatten each ball to 1.5" or 2" across.
- Bake at 350 degrees for 40 minutes. Cookies will be hard.
- Cool completely on wire rack and store in airtight container for up to two weeks.
- You may wish to crush the cookies and make "sprinkles" out of them using a zipper storage bag and the flat side of a meat mallet; keep these in the fridge in a covered container for up to two weeks.
- Batch yields 6 dozen cookies.
Here are the bloopers from my photo shoot with Buford. This dog is way too cute!
Wow – what a wonderful variation! How did the pups like them? Did they last as long as you had hoped? I did a little looking around on your blog and can’t wait to read some more. Love your description of chickens LOL!
They love them, and we stored in a Tupperware on the counter and they are almost through the double batch entirely! Helps with the puppy training to have them immediately available. As for longevity testing… well they seem to go through them faster then we can test them for that!
Brilliant! They go pretty fast in my house too 🙂
Tried your recipe today, and added 6 eggs to the recipe (I doubled the recipe and then used the eggs in the water measurement so not to get overly wet) – we always have extra eggs on our farm and I thought to add extra protein for our pooches. Because a little extra sticky, I did a drop cookie method. Came out quite dry (yippee), so hopefully will last a while! Thanks so much!