A Holiday Gingerbread Doghouse Recipe Just for Dogs

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• Not a substitute for professional veterinary help.

Want to include your dogs in the holiday decorating fun? Why not try your hand at making your dog their very own gingerbread house to enjoy?

Gingerbread isn’t normally safe for dogs because of the spices in it—especially nutmeg. This aromatic, dog-approved recipe features dog-friendly cinnamon, turmeric, and ginger, with low-fat cream cheese to hold it all together. Use carob in place of chocolate, and replace candy with your dog’s favorite treats to decorate.

Missing the dazzle of colorful sprinkles? We tried some traditional ornaments for decorative houses and served plain ones to our four-legged friends at the office.

Image courtesy of Kiki Kane

The cookies and frosting are easy breezy to throw together, but getting perfect cutout shapes and assembly can be a little trickier. Paper patterns like this one we used from Delicious Magazine are plentiful online, with many shapes and styles to choose from.

Be warned! In our experience, the bigger the house, the harder it is to get it to stick together. So for most our cookies, we opted to use this handy little cookie cutter set, thus assuring perfectly shaped components.

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Gingerbread Doghouse Recipe

We tried a few different flour blends to discover that whole wheat flour paired with oat flour (our favorite choice for dog treats) created an easily managed cookie dough that didn’t spread much during baking.

Straight oat flour dough will work, but the dough will not hold together so well. Equal parts oat flour and all purpose flour works well, but the dough stretches and spreads during the baking process.

• Author: Kiki Kane
• Prep Time: 15 minutes
• Cook Time: 25 minutes
• Total Time: 40 minutes
• Yield: 1 tray of cookies 1x

Scale 1x2x3x

Ingredients

• 2 cups oat flour
• 2 cups whole wheat flour
• 1 Tbsp ground ginger
• 1 tsp turmeric
• 1/2 tsp ground cinnamon
• 1/4 cup molasses
• 3/4 cup applesauce
• 1 egg
• 1 tsp vanilla extract
• 1 Tbsp coconut oil

For the frosting

• 1 block low-fat cream cheese
• 1 Tbsp vanilla

Instructions

1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees.
2. Combine dry ingredients and stir well.
3. Make a well in the center and add in the wet ingredients.
4. Stir to combine, adding more flour as needed to achieve a good dough to roll out.
5. Separate half the dough to work with, covering the remaining dough so that it doesn’t dry out.
6. Roll dough to a quarter inch thickness on a floured board.
7. Cut out house pieces, taking care as you lay them on your cookie sheet to straighten any wonky edges or lines.
8. Bake 20-25 minutes or until golden on the bottom.
9. You can turn off the oven and allow the cookies to cool in the oven if you want an extra-dry cookie.

For the frosting

1. Beat cream cheese and vanilla until fluffy. You can add a little powdered gelatin, cornstarch, or tapioca flour to maintain consistency.
2. Apply a thin coat of frosting to cooled house parts and press together carefully. It will take a minimum of 24 hours for a firm set.

Notes

Pro tip: Making these cute cookies for immediate consumption? You can use dog-safe peanut butter for the glue. The oil of the nut butter will eventually soak into your cookie house, so this is best for same-day snacking.