Dog healthy gluten free pumpkin cookies

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    Last Friday, my hairy little girl, Jesse, mixed shepherd, celebrated her 3rd birthday! Well, it's an approximate DOB determined by the Peta shelter that rescued her as she was found in the street by the animal pound unidentified when she was 9 month-old.

   She always gets little presents or a big one for her adoption birthday, her birthday and Christmas, treats, toys, plushies, a new comfortable bed...  just like any child! This year, I wanted to make her something myself because I had seen home made healthy treats on the Web for the past months and wanted to give them a try.

   As you may know, our doggies are not supposed to eat grains or the less possible, they should be eating grain free food full of vegetables, fruit and meat or fish. So I made gluten free healthy mini cakes and cookies, I used banana, apple, carrot, pumpkin and sweet potato, some healthy good-for-dogs ingredients, as well as, eggs, coconut (flour and oil), flax seeds, peanut and almond butter. Cinnamon is also advised to calm nausea and difficult digestion. For the flours, avoid any wheat ones, use coconut, chickpea, quinoa, whole rice or even amaranth flour or (gluten free) oats. If you're a little doggie owner, go check out this interesting article on "Top 22 tips on keeping your small dog healthy".

   With all these information, you're good to go and prepare any healthy treats for your fury friend! You can bake mini cakes or cookies as you want. I give you today a version of healthy gluten free pumpkin cookies, you prepare and cook them just like human shortbread cookies. You can replace pumpkin by sweet potato, in this case, you'll need a lot less flour - I can't give you an exact quantity for that but I suggest you to start with half the flour of the recipe and add some if needed until you can shape a non-sticky ball dough.

   You can, of course, cut the cookies with a bone-shaped cookie cutter if you have one, I tried to make one but I'm terrible at drawing, even a simple bone yes... So I used one of Jesse's treat and a sharp knife to shape some bone cookies in the dough and a falling star cookie cutter, because, well, cookie cutter are just so easy to use!

   Be careful to give meat or fish and vegetables (in raw or dry food) to your dogs, even if you're a vegetarian (like me) or a vegan, don't forget that our four-leg friends are carnivorous and should not have the same food diet as us ;-)

--> recette en français

Dog healthy gluten free pumpkin cookies


Prep time : 20 minutes
Rest time in fridge : 1 hour or less
Cook time : 15 minutes
Serving : about 20 to 25 cookies (depend of size)



- 2/3 cup (about 80g or 2,82 oz) chickpea flour (or other GF flour, cf. types named above)
- 1/8 cup (2 tbsp) almond or peanut butter
- 1 tsp apple sauce
- 1/8 cup (2 tbsp) coconut oil
- 1/4 cup (60 g or 2,12 oz) pumpkin purée
- 1 pinch of cinnamon (optional)

• In a mixing bowl, combine all the ingredients and form a ball dough. If the dough is too dry, add some water, if the dough is too wet to stick together, add some flour.

• Roll out the dough between two sheets of baking or wax paper, you may want to keep it in the fridge for 1 hour or 30 min in the freezer to make it easier to cut out.

• Remove the first sheet of paper, cut the dough out with cookies cutter or a pattern or any shape you want and a sharp knife. Do not throw away the scraps of dough, use them to form another ball of dough, roll it out and cut out shapes.

• Transfer the cut out forms onto a baking tray covered with baking paper and bake in a pre-heated oven for about 10 to 15 minutes at 350°F/160°C. Keep an eye on the cookies, I kind of burnt my first batch, they were not cooked at 10 minutes but 4 minutes later, they were very much brown, I had to throw some away. On the 2nd batch, they were ready after 12 minutes, they should be dark golden on the edges.

• Take them out of the oven and let them cool down and harden on the baking tray. Keep them in a airtight container or a jar for up to 10 days.

N.B. If you consider this is too much for one dog, you can freeze the uncooked shapes of dough to bake them later.  


--> recette en français

Sorry for the quite ugly pictures, I only had my smartphone with me that day. 

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