A Layette, Temperature Blanket, and Treats!

It’s been one of those weeks where I’ve been busy but I cannot for the life of me tell you what I’ve actually accomplished. Okay, well, I’ve been quite social which is probably good for the soul… but not great for crafty progress.

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I’m working so hard to finish the Bear Necessities Set so my nephew can wear it as soon as possible! I’m making this in the suggested Debbie Bliss Cashmerino. I only have one more square set before I get to the neckline shaping. Wish me luck on this one because we are officially power-knitting it.

As for my Temperature Blanket, I’ve managed to completely catch up. I feel like I could respectfully wear it as a scarf now. I’m making this in Drops Karisma.

That’s pretty much it for craft content because… I’m honestly still not entirely sure why. I seriously don’t know where this week went.

I suppose it’s not crafty, but it is DIY. I’ve been making Baxter treats for a while and I get asked about it a lot. One of the biggest questions is why? At its very base, I’m the type of person who wants to make everything, so I suppose that’s a factor. This all started when I bought this dog ice cream thing at the pet store. I looked at the ingredients and realized I was paying quite a bit for what ended up being fruit and yoghurt. I decided to give making it a try, which evolved into making speciality flavoured dog biscuits, which evolved into my realizing he isn’t the pickiest about mixing flavours, so they became sweet or savoury scrap biscuits.

I love that I can choose the sizing. When doing positive reinforcement training you need really high-value treats and you need lots of them. Keeping them small makes this so much easier. They also don’t have any sort of oily residue so when I’m sitting on the couch and knitting or at a pub they’re just less gross.

The first step is to collect. I have two zip bags in my freezer, one sweet, and one savoury. For the savoury, I put things like carrot peels, broccoli stems, tomato tops, sweet potato peels, pieces of peppers, wilted but still good spinach… anything that’s dog safe. For sweet I take more of a porridge-esque approach. Apple peels, dates, overripe fruit, bananas… The most important thing is making sure dogs can eat it and that it’s not rotten. A little sad is okay, but rotten is not.

I also add any egg whites or half eggs to this. If you don’t tend to have random egg whites lying around then you might need to add a few, just to help bind it all together.

The third thing is flour. Baxter has issues with too much gluten so I’ve used chickpea flour here. I’ve also used spelt and it’s turned out well. If your dog is fine with gluten normal flour works too.

Put all the vegetables into a food processor and go until it’s pureed. I usually do this in batches and transfer it to a bowl because my food processor is a bit small.

Next, add the flour.

How much you need depends on the type of flour, type of vegetables, even the amount of humidity in the air. We want it to be like a drop cookie dough texture, but more or less isn’t an issue, it’ll just mean different baking times.

Next, I spread it out on some lined baking trays. You want it to be relatively even. I then popped it in the oven at 180C for about a half hour.

This is the only step where speed really matters. While these are still hot score them into whatever size or shape you want them to be. This helps break them up when they’re done.

At this point they’re fully baked. I usually put them in at 50C-70C for a few hours to dehydrate them a bit so they last longer and are a bit crunchier. If I had a dehydrator I’d use it to get as much moisture out as I could.

I store them in airtight(ish) containers in the fridge, except for a few for walks that are in my coat pocket but are always used up within a few days. I take the living room ones out of the fridge in the morning and put them by where I sit most of the day so I can give him lots of treats. We have ones we take to bed for night rewards.

If you liked a bit of ∼domestic goddess∼ content, let me know. If you didn’t, (nicely) let me know that as well. More than anything else wish me luck in finishing the layette!

Thanks for hanging out with me again. My weekly podcast has video instructions for the treats as well!