I’ve made a few variations on them: honey and cinnamon;
tummy bones with fennel, parsley and mint; and nightie night bones with
chamomile tea. She loves them and sits
in the kitchen patiently waiting for them to cool ....... and by patiently I
mean barking almost incessantly!
These biscuits have no preservatives in them so they need to
be kept in the fridge. I find a 1lb
oatmeal batch makes about 32 bones so I freeze most of them and defrost a
handful every few days to keep them fresh.
The actual number of treats you make will depend on how thick or thin
you roll out the dough, and the size of your cutter. I have used a giant bone cutter to make big
thick bones as a kind of home-made dental cleaning treat.
The basic recipe is :
1lb porridge oats
8 fl oz water
Options inclusions are:
8 oz carrot/butternut squash/sweet potato
4oz honey and 2tsp cinnamon
1tsp each parsley, fennel, mint
Chamomile tea in place of water
To make veggie bones simply peel and dice the
carrot/squash/sweet potato, cut into chunks and pop in a blender with most of
the water. Blitz to a puree and add to
the oatmeal, using the reserved water to rinse out the blender and then add
that to the oatmeal (waste not want not!).
For the herb bones, grind the fennel seeds in a mortar and
pestle and add with the dry herbs to the oatmeal and mix well, then add the
water.
For the honey and cinnamon bones, I added the honey to
boiling water and then allowed it to cool, add the cinnamon to the oatmeal and
stir in before adding the liquid.
Kneed to form a ball of dough, adding a drop or so of water
if necessary.
Roll out to your desired thickness and cut shapes.
I bake mine at 150oC (300oF / gas mark 2) for approximately 20
minutes each side. Actual cooking time will
vary depending on the size and thickness of the treats, they need to be cooked until
they are hard. The giant bones were
cooked for 30 minutes each side, brought out to cool for 15 minutes and then
put back into the cooling oven to bake hard.
