Celebrating Milou's birthday and a recipe for apple and peanut-butter doggie cupcakes

[3]I know that baking cupcakes for your dog is a little ridiculous, but Tuesday will be the one-year anniversary of adopting our dog Milou [4], so I wanted to do something special.

This weekend, I made him apple-peanut butter cupcakes [5] and, of course, a birthday hat. (More on how I made that later this week.)

I found the dog-cupcake recipe on food.com. I picked it because it didn't contain carrots, which most dog-friendly recipes include. It just so happens that Milou [6] doesn't like carrots, or at least he won't eat them raw.

My sister rolled her eyes when I told her the dog cupcake recipe had to be carrot-free. However, if Milou is food-secure enough to be picky, I'm OK with it. He started life as a street dog in Peru [7]and usually tries to convince me he's still starving.

The cupcakes were a big, big hit. He loves peanut butter, so he was very satisfied with the birthday treat.

I made an excellent peanut-butter cake with chocolate frosting for us, so we were happy too. (I'll be sharing that recipe soon, as well.)

And I'm pretty sure that the photo above is going to end up in a picture frame on my desk. Isn't he cute?

[8]Apple Dog Cupcakes with Peanut Butter Frosting
1/4 cup applesauce, unsweetened
3 cups water
1/4 teaspoon vanilla
1 egg, beaten
3 tablespoons honey
4 cups whole wheat flour
1 tablespoon baking powder
3/4 cup apple, chopped
1/2 cup natural peanut butter
small dog treats for garnish

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Lightly grease muffin tins. In a bowl, combine the applesauce, water, vanilla, egg, and honey. In another bowl, mix flour and baking powder. Slowly add wet to dry ingredients and mix thoroughly. Stir in apples.
Pour in lightly greased muffin tins and bake about 30 minutes, or until toothpick inserted in center comes out clean. Cool muffins on a wire rack. When cool, frost them with the peanut butter and top each one with a small dog treat.

This made tons of doggie cupcakes, so we gave several to my sister for her dog, Grover, and froze a bunch, too.

#1 [9]

elippitz [10] wrote on July 30, 2012 at 9:07 am

This is adorable, Meg! Best doggie birthday ever! I probably would have joined Milou in eating his cupcakes, they sound really good!

#2 [11]

Meg Dickinson [1] wrote on July 30, 2012 at 10:07 am

[1]

Thanks! And ha, we have several in the freezer if you'd like to try one! They seemed a little dense, but I think I need to replace my baking powder. I had the same problem with the cake I made for us.