This year, my handsome man, Rennik, turned 6 years old. In celebration, I decided to make him some pupcakes. What are pupcakes? you may be asking yourself. Well, a pupcake is a cupcake, but for dogs. They are made with pet-friendly ingredients so that your furry family member can enjoy a piece of the sweet life!
Those who know me, know that I am not a baker. In fact, I hate it. Like, really hate it. There are just way too many ingredients in baked goods, they take way too much time and effort to measure out and combine, and I absolutely detest having to make icing and decorate things. But, for my little puppers, I will do anything. Even if it means I have to spend some quality time with my mixing bowl and bake him pupcakes.
First things first, I found this recipe online that required minimal ingredients. Next, I did the appropriate grocery shopping, which was actually pretty easy considering that the pupcakes only had six ingredients and one of them was water. Finally, I stepped into my kitchen and made some magic happen! The things I do for love…
Step One: Mash 2 bananas in a bowl. I left mine a bit chunky, to add some texture.
Step Two: Add 2 cups of water and 2 tablespoons of peanut butter.
Yep, Ren has his very own jar of peanut butter in our house!
Step Three: Allow puppers to lick the spoon because he is such a good boy!
He’s so cute, I can’t even!
Step Four: Add 1 egg to wet ingredient bowl (I’m not a big fan of people or pets eating raw egg, so that’s why Ren got to lick the spoon a bit early). Then, pulse 3 cups of oats and 1 tablespoon of baking powder in food processor. I have to admit, I made these again for National Cupcake Day at work and I skipped the food processor. The pupcakes survived, but I did use Quick Oats, so maybe that’s why I could get away with it? Again, I am not a baker and this extra step of processing dry ingredients was just excessive as far as I am concerned.
Step Five: Combine wet and dry ingredients together and mix, mix, mix!
Step Six: Grease mini-muffin tin and pour mixture until 3/4 full. In retrospect, these do not rise much so for batch #2, I definitely filled those suckers up to the top. The original recipe suggested adding some extra oats to the top of each pupcake, so I did. Several batches later and I got fancy by adding unsalted peanuts to some, blueberries to others and banana slices to a final batch (mostly because I ran out of peanuts and blueberries).
Step Seven: Realize you forgot to pre-heat the oven to 350 degrees. Stand around like a dummy for 10 minutes while it warms up, sighing and telling yourself, “This is why I don’t bake!”
Step Eight: Bake pupcakes for 10 minutes, rotate pan and continue to bake for another 10 minutes.
Step Nine: Ta-da! Fresh pupcakes, ready to be enjoyed by your one and only, most handsomest birthday pup! ❤
Thank you to everyone for reading. Let me know if you’ve made your own pupcakes (or dog treats) and what you added to make them special. 🙂
– Kait.
Snelgrove Vet (Brampton, ON) 