Baking For the Family, Copper's Cookies

We recently began buying the Hound Dawg puppy cookies to supplement his little pepperoni inspired treats.  He loves them!

Even though it was my idea to buy them, I think they are expensive.  They are good though, made with cane sugar, molasses, flour, spices and no weird unpronounceable things.  

The Dawg thinks they're yummy.  Well, the are yummy.  Yes, I did try them. (Yes, I am THAT person...)

This week, I needed to use up some applesauce and I thought dog cookies sounded like a wonderful thing to try.  I found a great Peanut Butter and Applesauce Dog Biscuit Recipe over at dogtipper.com.  So far Hound Dawg thinks these are pretty good too.  They are.  (Yes, I tried them too.  Hey, I made them.)  

I think convenience will still occasionally beat out economics in our future "dog cookie/biscuit buying versus baking model" but I'm very glad to have a fun, easy and fairly fast way to make wholesome treats for the pooch.  Overall, they truly are much less expensive than the store bought goodies and I like being able to cut whatever shapes I like.


The question might be asked, "Why go to this much trouble over dog treats?"  The answer, "We like that Hound Dawg!"  Plus, recently we did a not entirely scientific or well controlled experiment/taste test with the Dawg and he pretty definitively told us he likes his cookies.  


Judge for yourself:

Whole Wheat Pitas with Flax

You know how you step away from the blog for just a second with every intention of coming right back and then you turn around and it's been two months? Yep, that's what's happened here. The really sad thing is that even though I haven't blogged here I think about blogging here once or twice a week. The ideas are flowing, I just don't have time/energy.

Here's a recipe I've been playing around with lately. It was inspired by some truly unpleasant pitas I picked up at the store not long ago. I thought, "Why am I buying these less-than-pleasing pitas when I can just make my own?" So, I am.

This recipe has two tracks. For purposes of time in my own life, I've started using my bread machine to do the mixing, kneading, and rising. I really like the results and it's made homemade fresh bread so much easier.  However, I'm including instructions to make them without a machine as well.

Whole Wheat Pita with Flax

1 cup +1 tablespoon warm water (110 degrees F/45 degrees C)
1 1/2 teaspoons active dry yeast
1/4 cup olive oil
1 1/2 teaspoons raw sugar
1 teaspoon salt
1/2 cup stone ground whole wheat
1/2 cup milled flax
2 cups whole wheat pastry flour

Fruit Pockets

A few weeks ago, I started wondering about whole wheat pie crust. I eat very little “white” bread.  I never make white bread.  I began to wonder why I’m satisfied with white flour pie for my pie crust. This quickly led to Google and a recipe search. It wasn’t long after that initial search that I made a quiche with sharp cheddar and left over ham accompanied by a whole wheat crust. I was hooked.

When you read about whole wheat and grains, you’ll consistently run into the word “nutty”. Not as in, “Those whole wheat people are absolutely nutty” but more as, “I really enjoyed the nutty flavor of the stone ground wheat, milled flax, insert grain of choice here, etc.” As the crust is one of my favorite parts of the quiche I was thrilled by the additional texture and added flavors of the whole wheat crust and yes, it did add a nice “nutty” flavor.

Here, I have to say, and not to come across as unduly prideful, but I do make a mighty mean pie crust, a melt in your mouth, lighter than air pie crust. What I found with my whole wheat crust was that white flour crust is a piece of cake but wheat flour takes some patience. It’s not that mixing it up is any more difficult, it's that the pastry dough tends to break more easily.   Where I can easily transfer a white flour crust to a pie plate, whole wheat crust doesn’t like to move about as much. After reading a few tips, I settled on rolling out the pie crust on wax paper (I would have rather used parchment paper but was out) and this made both the rolling and transfer much easier. Also, with a whole wheat crust, it may be necessary to do some “patching” in the pie plate. All of this is a bit more troublesome but, I’ve found the taste and texture of the whole wheat is worth the effort.

About this time, if you read the title of the entry you’re beginning to wonder what in the world quiche and pie crust have to do with fruit pockets. Perhaps, I’ve reeled you in under false pretenses.

Oh no my friends, here’s the thing... when you make a pie crust recipe that’s large enough to make either two single crusts or one double crust and you only need one single crust for the quiche, you have one crust left over. Often, I will stick the left over crust in the freezer for later but on that day I had peaches to use and thought how really nice mini-peach pies would be and, wouldn’t they taste nice with a whole wheat crust. I couldn’t find a recipe that did exactly what I wanted to do so I just went by instinct and thought I’d share the finished the product.