A Homemade Doggy Pumpkin Pie

This year was Hoku’s first Thanksgiving with us so we wanted to make sure there was something special for him to munch on too. So while all of us humans were stuffing our faces making a lovely holiday meal in the kitchen, we carved out a little time in the day to bake Hoku some mini pumpkin pies, inspired by this recipe from the Adventures of a Dog Mom blog. I made a few tweaks due to Hoku’s possible Shiba wheat allergies and substituted the wheat flour for almond flour. And since I didn’t have any oatmeal, I used oat flour instead. And for the applesauce, we pureed a fresh Fuji apple.

So there you have it, a super simple and healthy Thanksgiving dessert!

Recipe: Peanut Butter & Pumpkin Ice Cream

Hoku’s grandma is in town this week visiting us from Hawaii. Which is just another way of saying that he has been extra spoiled. Every time I look around, I will catch her sneaking him a doggy cookie or some peanut butter.

My mom and I have a tradition of spending a lot of time baking in the kitchen when we’re together so this time, we decided to try our hand at making Hoku some homemade dog-friendly treats.

The first item on our menu was peanut butter and pumpkin doggy ice cream, based on this ridiculously easy recipe we found on Dog Milk. It’s basically plain nonfat yogurt, 100% pure pumpkin puree and peanut butter (we used an all-natural, unsweetened version), all mixed together and chilled in the freezer. 

We topped off a scoop of ice cream with some “doggy sprinkles”: unsweetened coconut flakes and minced carrots.  

Note: I calculated the calories in this ice cream to be approximately 80-100 calories per scoop. Most of those calories are from the peanut butter. Obviously this is not something to feed your pup everyday, but as an occasional cool snack, and preferably after a nice, long walk.