There are two types of people in this world: people who give presents to dogs and people who do not.
If you fall in the “do not gift presents to dogs” column, the following content may not appeal to you. If you do give presents to dogs, welcome to our club, and please pass the lint roller.
Dog treats are incredibly easy and special gifts for the dogs in your life. We made a recipe that is perfect for Christmas (mostly because it has a “punny” name that you can put on a gift tag!), but the beauty of dog treats as that dogs love nearly anything, and the focus is to include ingredients that are good for them.
Our Partridge in a Pear (Dog) Treats don’t actually contain partridge – we used chicken because it is convenient and dog-friendly (unless, of course, your dog’s diet doesn’t include poultry). We added some juicy ripe pears, but you can substitute whatever you have on hand, or anything your dog treat-recipient happens to love. If you use ingredients like peanut butter, we recommend using a homemade or “natural” variety that doesn’t include added salt or sugar, because dogs don’t tend to be picky about things like seasoning (and it’s not great for them!).
Depending on the moisture content of your ingredients, you may need to add a little bit more or a little bit less flour. In the end, you just want a workable dough that you can roll out easily. We found that these treats sometimes puffed up like pita bread while they baked. You may not mind this, but an easy remedy is to poke the dough all over with the tines of a fork (in the baking universe, this is called “docking.”)
The longer these treats bake, the crunchier they will be. If you plan to store them or make them ahead of time, you’ll want them to be very dry and crispy, which will keep them from spoiling. But, as seems to be the theme, you have some flexibility here. If you are gifting these treats to small or senior dogs, you can bake the treats for less time so they don’t get quite as crunchy. They will be more forgiving to tired teeth.