Doggy Birthday Cake

We celebrated my sweet pup's birthday today at work. To celebrate, I gave Callisto a pat on the head and a peanut butter banana cake. She loved it. So did her friends. I've never seen a cake disappear so quickly. I think it was gone within 5 minutes.

Anyway, this is a super easy recipe to whip up that I found over at Taste. And it is perfectly okay for your dog to eat. It smelled really good when I pulled it out of the oven, but I doubt it would taste good to us because there is no sugar in it. Please make it! Your dogs will love you.

Makes 16 servings.

Total prep and cook time: 1 hour

Ingredients: 

• 1 c all purpose flour
• 1 tsp baking soda 
• 1/2 tsp salt
• 1 or 2 bananas, mashed
• 1/4 c all natural (no sugar added) peanut butter- microwave 30-45 seconds if it's not already runny
• 1/4 c canola or vegetable oil 
• 3/4 c water
• 1 c white yogurt chips (can be found in pet store or pet section-made for small animals)
• dog food

Feel free to skip through the picture demonstration to get straight to the listed directions.

Preheat oven to 375 degrees. Spray an 8 x 8 in round cake pan with non-stick cooking spray.

Whisk flour, baking soda, and salt together in a bowl.  Add the mashed banana(s), peanut butter, and oil and mix with a wooden spoon.

Add water to the mixture in small amounts until it resembles the consistency of cake batter. I didn't measure this, I just kept adding a little at a time until it looked right. The original recipe recommends 3/4 cup water.

Pour the batter into the greased cake pan. Bake uncovered for 30-40 minutes, or until a toothpick comes out clean. Mine took a little under 35 minutes.

Allow cake to cool completely. Transfer onto a cake plate or wherever you plan on keeping it. Then whip out those yogurt chips.

These guys were supposed to be white. I didn't expect french vanilla to be this color. But they didn't have "white yogurt chips" anywhere I checked, and these worked just fine. The dogs still inhaled every crumb of the cake.

So toss those guys in a microwave safe bowl and set the time for 2-3 minutes. Pull the bowl out of the microwave every 30 seconds and stir the chips. I had to add a little water towards the end of the cook time to help the melted chips spread a little easier- they were starting to look a little over cooked. Make sure the melted chips are pretty smooth so that you can spread it over the cake.

Plop those melted chips over the cake and spread it as best you can. It's okay if it doesn't look perfect. You are feeding it to dogs, so who cares.

Padaaa!

Then you can press pieces of dog food into the icing however you like. I wrote out my pups name. I had to leave out one of the L's in her name because it wouldn't fit all the way across. Allow the icing to harden before serving. It should take no more than 30 minutes to harden.

Serve the cake to a herd of hungry pups.

SUCCESS!

 Directions:
1) Preheat oven to 375 degrees. Grease a 8 x 8 in round pan with non-stick cooking spray.
2) Whisk together flour, baking soda, and salt. Stir in mashed bananas, peanut butter, and oil with a wooden spoon. Add small amounts of water until it resembles cake batter consistency.
3) Bake uncovered for 30-40 minutes or until toothpick inserted comes out clean. Allow cake to cool completely.
4) Melt yogurt chips in a microwave safe bowl for 2-3 minutes, stirring every 30 seconds. Spread over cooled cake.
5) Decorate by pressing pieces of dog food onto cake.

Happy 3rd Birthday Callisto! :)