Harry Hors D'oeuvres: Birthday Pupcakes

As promised, Harry's cupcakes, or should I say "pupcakes", were served on his actual birthday February 18th.  These treats bring such joy to Harry's eyes it's ridiculous.  Anytime I get one out he sits, he lays down, goes back to sit, lays down again, as if he's attempting to do any command I might ask of him in the fastest way possibly so as to speed the process of cupcakes to mouth.  Unfortunately this hasn't brought about new tricks that I wish Harry could do...like talking, giving me his paw, or folding my laundry.

I got the recipe for the cake here and modified it so I could make cupcakes instead.  Making them cupcake sized allowed me to keep these treats around for the whole week instead of Harry binge-ing on an entire cake in one sitting.  So here we go...

For the pupcakes, you will need 1 cup of flour (wheat or white), 1 tsp baking soda, 1 egg, 1/4 cup peanut butter, 1 cup shredded or grated carrots, 1 tsp vanilla, 1/3 cup honey, and I used lowfat cottage cheese as frosting.  You'll want to start by preheating your oven to 350 degrees.

Dog recipes are so easy peasy, you just put all the ingredients in one big bowl and mix them together.  Oh and by the way, I grated my carrots by chopping them up first and throwing them into my Ninja blender.  It saved a lot of time, but if you don't have a blender or food processor, I suppose you could use a cheese grater!

Once mixed, line a cupcake tray with liners.  You don't need to spray anything - the vegetable oil in the cake prevents the papers from sticking.  I found that I could get about 10 cupcakes out of my mix.

Fill your cupcake liners about 2/3 of the way with cake batter.  These do rise, but not as much as you'd expect a box cake mix to rise.  Put in the oven and bake for about 30-40 minutes.  Mine were done in 35.

While the pupcakes cooled, Harry helped me clean up by licking the bowl.  He wouldn't do it in front of me even though I said it was ok.  It was only when I walked away that Harry was brave enough to indulge in cake batter.

The coast is clear!

I topped Harry's birthday cupcake with the lowfat cottage cheese pictured earlier.  Although it sounds really gross to me, he found it tantalizing.  With a few blobs of purple human frosting and the touch of a birthday candle, Harry's pupcake was complete!

We indulged Harry with the birthday song which he thoroughly enjoyed.  His face was mesmerized by the presentation of fancy treat accompanied by fire and song.  The birthday tradition probably looks insane to first-timers, but it didn't go unappreciated.



With my help, Harry blew out his candle and dug into his deserved pupcake.  Tentative at first, Harry began by licking the frosting off his cake first.  Then full on cake swallowing ensued.  He literally barely chewed, and the remaining two cupcakes he ate that night had to be broken up first because we were afraid he'd choke.  Yea...I let Harry have three cupcakes on his birthday.

All in all it turned out to be a pretty good first birthday for Harry.  And if you're wondering what the cakes tasted like, they were almost a peanut butter flavored carrot cake.  Pretty good for dog standards I'd say.  Harry has been having a cupcake for breakfast every day this week before we leave for work.  I'm pretty sure he's not going to want to stop celebrating.

Nom NOM nom Nom