pet connection

I am mostly finished with work for the rest of the month, so I spent this rainy day doing some holiday baking. Of course, I couldn’t leave the girls out, so I just wrapped up four sheets of dog biscuits. Thanks to my assortment of cookie cutters, there are small and large bone shapes, Scotties (the closest thing I have to a Cavalier), a Greyhound, two horses for my friend Audrey to take to her equine pals, and some tree shapes for her Corgi Nigel. I made so many that there will be enough to go around to the other dogs in the neighborhood: Bear the Pomeranian, Kobe the Lab, Sugar Rae the Boxer, Scottie the, well, Scottie, and Max the Bichon. I tasted one myself and gave a bite to Jerry. They’re pretty good. “You can make these for me any time,” he said. The girls appeared to agree.

Here’s the recipe, which is adapted from the December 2005 issue of Gourmet:

1 1/4 cups all-purpose flour

1 1/4 cups whole-wheat flour (I used King Arthur white whole wheat flour, which is less dense than regular whole-wheat flour)

1 1/4 cups cornmeal

1 1/4 cups rolled oats

1/2 cup toasted wheat germ

1/2 cup light brown sugar, packed

1 tablespoon baking powder

1 1/2 teaspoons salt

1 1/2 sticks unsalted butter, cold, cut into 12 slices

1 cup plus 1 tablespoon water

1/2 cup chopped fresh parsley

1/2 cup chopped fresh mint leaves

1 large egg

Mix flours, cornmeal, oats, wheat germ, brown sugar, baking powder and salt in a food processor until combined. I used my 27-year-old original Cuisinart for this and it was just barely big enough to hold all the ingredients and the resulting dough. You might do well to use a larger food processor or a KitchenAid if you have one.

Add butter and pulse (or use a wire pastry blender if you’re mixing this in a bowl) until mixture resembles coarse meal with pea-size lumps. Add 1 cup of water and pulse (or stir) until a coarse, dense dough forms.

Turn out onto a lightly floured surface and knead in parsley and mint until well distributed. Having done this, I think it would work better to just add the parsley and mint to the food processor with everything else. It would blend in better and might make the biscuits a pretty green color.

Preheat oven to 350 degrees Fahrenheit. By the time you’re finished rolling out the dough and cutting out the biscuits, it should be ready.

Divide the dough into two balls. Roll out the first one on a well-floured surface with a well-floured rolling pin. It should be about 1/3-inch thick. This dough was really easy to roll out and cut out. I may try to figure out how to adapt it for “people” cookies because I had a terrible time with the last batch of sugar cookies I tried to make. Cut out as many biscuits as possible and arrange about 1/4 inch apart on baking sheet. This recipe does not say to use a greased baking sheet, but I would recommend either doing that or using a silicone baking liner. That’s what I used for the first batch. They peeled off perfectly, but I just pulled out the second two sheets and they are going to be more difficult to remove from the pan.

Gather scraps and reroll as needed. Repeat with the second ball of dough.

Whisk 1 egg with 1 tablespoon water to make an egg wash. Brush the biscuits with it and bake about 35 minutes, until tops are golden brown. Switch position of sheets halfway through (I didn’t bother doing this and they were fine). Turn off oven and dry biscuits in oven overnight.

Oops, I started giving them to the dogs as soon as they cooled. Oh well. They didn’t seem to mind.

Biscuits keep, layered between sheets of wax paper or parchment, in an airtight container at room temperature 1 month.