The best peanut butter and oatmeal cookies for dogs

🐶🥣 This is Canines in the Kitchen. Follow Willow, our Taste Tester Terrier, on a culinary expedition to find the best, healthiest homemade doggie treats.

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If you enjoy cooking and you’re also a dog owner, you’re probably never alone in the kitchen. Having a little fuzzy chef’s assistant is a blessing. It’s easy to feel guilty, though, when you’re baking something that your pup isn’t allowed to eat!  Which leads me to…

I’ve been stress-baking up a storm during the pandemic. My dog, Willow, a terrier mix [probably 🤷‍♀️], likes to join me in the kitchen when the culinary craze has caught me. The baking bummer for Willow is that she can’t have most of the tasty treats that come out of my oven.

There’s a sweet silver lining, though.  Baking bummers transformed to a canine cooking celebration recently. It all started when Willow learned to surf the internet. Bet your best ladle you didn’t see that coming! Willow’s cat brother, Sherman, who has twice applied to Mensa, showed Willow how to use Google. Soon, Willow went from mashing “JSKDGHr” into the search field to carefully typing out “Best dog peanut butter oatmeal cookies.” Hindsight being what it is, I now realize this interspecies web surfing lesson was slightly out of the ordinary.

It was one night a while ago when Willow learned to use the printer. I heard it spinning up in the middle of the night. I  just assumed it was Sherman printing more strongly worded letters to Mensa. I didn’t think much about it. But when I woke up the next morning, I found a recipe for delicious dog treats waiting for me on my kitchen counter.

I read the recipe, looked at Willow, gave her a high five, and began baking at once.  That’s how I  discovered the joy of baking for dogs. It’s also how Willow became a Taste Tester Terrier.

The cookies Willow and I chose was inspired by this recipe from Recipe Diaries. I had to use some substitutions, so I will list exactly what I used for my batch.

After you’ve combined the wet and dry ingredients, mix them together until the dough is firm and looks like standard cookie dough.

You’ve seen The Great British Bake Off, right? Flour a surface to use to roll out your dough. Then use a rolling pin (or dowel or some sort) to flatten the dough to ½ inch thick.

This dough works well with pretty much any shape. We went simple with a small, round cookie cutter. You can also use the rim of a glass if you don’t have one.

After baking for about fifteen minutes, this is the light-brown, decadent color you want to see.

Willow stood up on her back feet in order to get a closer sniff at the peanut butter oatmeal cookies. When I offered her the first taste, she was delighted. Delight gave way to devouring. She was soon asking for a second cookie. I wonder what recipe she will find next!