Happy Birthday Colby!

Colby is one year old today. Birthdays are big in our house, so I decided to do something to celebrate. I decided to bake homemade dog biscuits. Actually, I've been thinking about it for a while because Milkbones are $3.50 a box.

Here is the recipe I worked from. I printed it from this website where you can find loads other recipes for dog treats. I chose this one because my dog loves Milk-bones and because it seemed simple to do. I didn't have any whole wheat flour or powdered milk, so off to the store we went. After seeing the whole wheat flour was $5.69 for a small bag, my husband insisted the flour we had at home was fine. I didn't argue with him at the grocery store because we aren't white trash.

These were my ingredients and everything I used to make the dog biscuits, minus the wax paper and cookie sheet, obviously. I'm not sure what I'm going to do with a whole box of powdered milk; I guess I have to keep making dog biscuits until it's gone. Overall, these biscuits did not make that big of a mess.

This is me, adding flour to the mixture until it forms a dough. It took longer than I wanted it to, so eventually I just dumped the rest of the flour in there. Kind of a mistake because it got a lot harder to stir. I had to use my hands after that. I think that yellowish color is from the margarine.

Here's my big honking pile of dough. The 1/2 cup measure is there to give you an idea of how large the dough mound is. I didn't have a rolling pin, so I beat the sucker flat with my fists and forearms. Not too flat, because the recipe calls for 1/2 inch thickness. In case you are wondering, yes, I did try a little piece of the dough. Not too bad actually.

Time for the cookie cutter! I bought this gem off the Cookie Cutter Shop. It's the 4 inch dog bone one. They had smaller but sold them at the same price as the large. It was $1.95 plus $2.95 shipping. It came nicely packaged a few days later. I wish the ends of the bone were more pronounced because I had a little difficulty lifting the cookie off the wax paper. I had to redo a few.

This is my helper, the birthday boy. Colby is wondering why I'm bothering, when there are perfectly good Milkbones in the box on the other side of the room. He wouldn't mind if I took a break to fetch him one. When will these be done anyway?

Here they are, ready for the oven. I made a few milk balls because I had extra dough. I figured 50 minutes in the oven will cook them all the way through. I didn't know how far apart to space the bones; I'm not what you'd call an avid baker. This cookie sheet configuration turned out well though. You can see some of the bones are misshaped. I had some trouble removing them from the dough to the cookie sheet. The thicker the dough was, the easier the job became. I was tempted to take a toothpick and write Colby in each of the bones, but I wanted my husband to still respect me.

I baked them and let them cool for a few hours. The time had come for Colby testing. The biscuits weren't rock hard as I thought they'd be. I could push on them and make an indent. They also smelled strongly of butter to the point where I think the recipe might have called for too much margarine. They definitely reminded me of people biscuits by the color and the way they smelled. I guess I was expecting more Milkbone-like. Here is the video of Colby eating his first birthday biscuit.



I'm not sure if he realized it was food, not a toy. He eventually ate it, but it took him a few minutes of playing first. I didn't expect him to take us on a tour of the house, sorry about that. I'd say after all that work, the response was fun, but anti-climatic. I was expecting a mad devouring, but got a game of keep-away instead.