You Gotta Make Your Dog Their Own Pumpkin Bread
Starbucks pumpkin bread is a street drug for dogs. At least if you are my dog – so much so that when my last girl, Lucy, stopped eating in recent days due to cancer, I ran around town desperately trying to track her down, trying my best Shirley McClain, running downtown … , “ She needs her pumpkin bread! But I digress.
Doberman Pinscher Clementine, my current obsession, crawled over the glass to lay its paws on the warm pumpkin bread. And while there’s nothing about the real thing that could seriously harm, the truth is, between the plastic packaging and the cost, it makes sense to just pull out the mixer and make this seasonal treat with your own hands. Plus it’s absurdly simple and inexpensive.
Since they (the dogs) are not going to share, we (humans) can hack the recipe to make it even more useful for our furry offspring. Step one: Eliminate pumpkin dressing – this is the riskiest part of a dog’s recipe. While most pumpkin bread lacks cinnamon, etc. to wreak havoc, there is no point in keeping it here. We’re also going to add calcium, leaving the eggshells (check with your veterinarian if your dog can handle it), and get rid of the fat and sugar by adding applesauce. Then we’ll add the banana. Why a banana? Clementine Doberman: Trust the Process.
How to make homemade pumpkin bread just for dogs
Ingredients
- 1 1/2 cups whole grain flour
- Baking soda
- ½ teaspoon salt
- 4 eggs
- ¾ cups applesauce
- 1 banana
- ¾ cups canned pumpkin (not pie filling, only pumpkin)
- Coconut oil
- Combine flour, baking soda, and salt.
- In a mixer, beat four eggs and chopped shells. (No kidding, just toss them in there if you like, you can use an egg and shell blender first). Add applesauce, banana and pumpkin and stir until smooth, about 60 seconds.
- Now add the dry ingredients and stir slowly until they are combined, scraping off the bowl to make sure the dry ingredients are not hiding.
- Pour onto a buttered bread pan (I like to grease it with coconut oil) and bake at 350 ℉ for 60 minutes until it passes the toothpick test. (Stick a toothpick or skewer into the center of the loaf and pull it out. If she pulled out a clean one, you’re done, if she has dough on it, continue cooking.)
- Let cool, then cut into centimeter-thick slices.
Wrap them up and put them in the freezer like in the “Bak”. The slices thaw in about 30 minutes, and you can nuk them for 20 seconds to warm and toast, which is the preferred form of cooking Clementina Doberman.