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Taco and Hamburger dog treats

Homemade Cheddar and Beef Dog Treats

  • Author: Kiki Kane
  • Prep Time: 30 minutes
  • Cook Time: 20 minutes
  • Total Time: 50 minutes
  • Yield: varies
  • Category: Special Occasion
Scale

Ingredients

  • 1 cup nonfat yogurt (if your dog is lactose intolerant, substitute pureed pumpkin)
  • 2 no-sodium bouillon cubes
  • 1 tbsp turmeric
  • 2 tbsp olive oil (leave this out if your dog can’t tolerate fat)
  • 1 cup finely shredded low-fat cheese (if your dog is lactose intolerant, substitute ¼ cup nutritional yeast)
  • 2 cups rolled oat flour (you can make this at home by pulverizing rolled oats in your food processor)
  • 2 cups whole wheat flour (you can substitute with any dog-friendly gluten-free flour like coconut or tapioca)
  • 2 eggs

Decoration

Instructions

Preheat the oven to 350º

In a stand mixer, set the yogurt, olive oil, bouillon cubes, and turmeric to stir.

Once everything is fully combined and the bouillon has fully dissolved, add the finely grated cheese and stir.

Add the flour a cup at a time and continue mixing, adding the eggs when the mixture starts to look dry (about halfway through the flour)

Once all the flour is well incorporated, divide the dough into three parts, one large and two smaller, into separate bowls.

Next, we will mix in the food coloring. You may want gloves at this point, the red is the most staining of the three colors.

The largest portion will be used for the buns, taco shells, and corndog coating so we will add yellow food coloring a bit at a time, working it in your hands until evenly incorporated.

The smaller two will be the green for lettuce and the red for the meat. The green will be easy to color and the red will take the most food coloring to get to the right shade. You may need to add a touch of the green or yellow to the red at some point to darken your shade of red and not wind up hot pink.

Keep all the doughs covered or pop into Ziploc bags to keep the dough from drying out. The covered dough can last up to a week in the fridge.

For the Tacos

You’re going to need two different cookie cutters for this shape – a circle and a fluted circle of the same size.

Fluted circle cookie cutter

Use the circle cutter to make circles of your yellow dough to be the taco shell.

make 2 ropes of green dough and 1 rope of red dough and roll them out so that the edges of the fluted circle cutter feature the green dough and the center is red.

Place a fluted filling piece on top of a taco shell piece and gently fold in half. Squeeze the taco shell closed just enough to showcase the filling evenly.

You can glaze with an egg wash (equal parts egg and milk) for a shiny finish.

For the Hamburgers

You will need one small circle cutter to create these cute little sliders. You hamburgers will be a little tall at first, but you can gently squish the layers together to get the dimensions you want and to ensure they don’t fall apart.

For the buns, you will want two yellow circles, one thick for the fluffy top bun and one thinner for the bottom bun.

Make your red meaty layer on the thicker side. We mixed in a little flakey dehydrated dog treat to change up the texture a bit.

For the lettuce, you can pinch off and hand form a very thin layer of green dough.

Once you’ve sandwiched your layers together, gently squeeze and shape the hamburger until you’re happy with the shape.

Dab a little yogurt or egg wash onto the top bun then dip into a bowl of sesame seeds for a fancy sesame seed bun.

Paint with egg wash if you prefer a shiny finished product.

For the mini corndogs

Roll yellow dough into thick strips.

Cut your sausage style dog treats into nice sections and cover in the dough, being careful to shape the ends so the sausage part is prominently featured. You can trim the ends with a sharp knife if you prefer.

Bake your finished treats on parchment paper for about 20 minutes or until just starting to get a little color on your buns and taco shells.

Cool and serve!