Canine Crumpets

I know, I know, this recipe has been posted before.  But the MSPCA's Valentine's Day bake sale starts this weekend, and because I provide a link to the recipe on each bag of Canine Crumpets, I wanted this to be the first recipe that pops up when visiting the site.  Those of you visiting http://www.baconbutterbooze.com/ for the first time, welcome! 

Here is my recipe for Canine Crumpets, a wonderful and easy to bake treat for pups of all shapes and sizes!

Canine Crumpets

½ pound chicken livers
1 cup chicken stock
½ cup corn oil
¼ c. chopped parsley
1 cup powdered milk
1 cup rolled oats
½ cup brewer’s yeast
1 cup soy flour
1 cup cornmeal
3 cups whole wheat flour

Preheat the oven to 350. Slice the chicken livers into smaller pieces and cook them over high heat in a frying pan. When they are fully cooked through, place them in a blender with the chicken stock, corn oil, and parsley. Blend until liquefied.

In a large mixing bowl, combine all remaining ingredients and mix well. Add the chicken liver puree and mix again, using your hands - the dough will be very stiff.

When dough is completely mixed, break off a tennis-ball section, wrapping the rest in plastic. Take the dough ball and roll it into a quarter-inch thick sheet. Using a small cookie cutter, cut into shapes and place on a baking sheet lined with foil. Bake them 16-20 minutes or until golden brown. Allow to cool completely, then transfer to a plastic container. They will keep longer if stored in the refrigerator.

Homeless for the Holidays Bake Sale, Lemon Ricotta Cookies

Beginning tomorrow, the MSPCA Animal Care and Adoption Center is holding its “Homeless for the Holidays” bake sale to raise money for the shelter animals.  Thursday 12/9 – Sunday 12/12, from 9-5, delicious baked goods will be available to the public, including some bearing the Bacon, Butter & Booze logo!

After exhausting myself baking gazillions of treats for the shelter’s Howl-O-Ween bake sale, I swore I wouldn’t do this again unless I had help, but alas, I got down to business and baked my little heart out.  After all, it’s for the animals, and they don’t understand the concepts of being too busy or too tired.  So, I dropped the gloves (OK, oven mitts) and squared off to fight my fatigue in order to bake Roasted Garlic Focaccia Bread (click here for recipe), Canine Crumpets (click here for recipe), and several batches of delicious, moist, almost cake-like Lemon Ricotta Cookies (recipe below). 

If you are in the Boston area and able to swing by South Huntington Ave., you can sample some of these fabulous treats along with other homemade goodies and donations from some of Boston’s best bakeries.  If you cannot stop in, do try this yummy cookie recipe at home! 

Lemon Ricotta Cookies

2 1/2 cups all-purpose flour

1 1/2 teaspoons baking powder

1 teaspoon salt

1 stick unsalted butter, softened

1 1/2 cups sugar

2 eggs

1 2/3 cups whole milk ricotta cheese, drained if necessary*

Zest from 2 large lemons

Juice from 2 large lemons, separated

1 cup powdered sugar

Preheat the oven to 375.  In a large mixing bowl, combine the softened butter and the sugar.  Use an electric mixer, mix for approx 3-5 minutes, or until the sugar and butter are consistently combined.  Add the eggs, one at a time, beating well. 

Next, add the ricotta, lemon zest, and juice from one of the lemons.  Beat this again until well-mixed, then add the flour, baking powder, and salt.  Mix until wet and dry ingredients are fully incorporated and a sticky dough is formed. 

Using a spoon, portion approximately 2 tablespoons of the dough (roughly golf ball size) per cookie onto a baking sheet, leaving enough room between cookies for them to expand (they will end up about 3 inches in diameter).  It is best to prepare each baking sheet just before it is to go in the oven; if you prepare the sheets ahead of time, the dough will ‘melt’ and your cookies will turn out flatter, less fluffy, and may collide with each other on the sheet.   Bake for 15 minutes, or until the edges begin to brown slightly. 

While the cookies are baking, prepare the glaze.  In a small bowl, combine the juice of the 2nd lemon and the powdered sugar.  Stir until a smooth glaze forms.  Set aside.

Once you remove each round of cookies from the oven, give them about 20 minutes to cool a bit.  Using a small brush (silicone ones are best, as you don’t have to worry about bristles falling out), brush each cookie with the glaze and set aside to allow the glaze to harden for at least 2 hours. 

OPTIONAL:  Channel your inner artist - sprinkle the glaze with colored sugar while the glaze is still wet, or, once the glaze has hardened, use colored icing or glaze in a small-tipped tube to draw fun shapes or designs.

*  Use a high-quality ricotta (I prefere Dragone brand) – some brands tend to be watery, which will affect the texture of the cookies. 

MSPCA Bake Sale, Canine Crumpets





This is what 500 Canine Crumpets looks like!



Whew! 14 hours, 500 canine crumpets, 60 biscotti, and 40 slices of roasted garlic foccacia later, and I am finally done preparing for the MSPCA’s Halloween Bake Sale! This was a lot more time-consuming than I thought it would be, so if I decide to do this again I‘ll definitely try to bribe a few friends to help out. After an entire day of baking, I’m fried!

Two of the recipes I made have been featured in previous posts, but I will repost them, along with a new recipe, Canine Crumpets. This is not an original recipe (I found it online here), but I did tweak it a little, adding more parsley after a suggestion in Natural Dog Magazine. These doggie biscuits are very easy to make, although you might have to hunt for some of the ingredients, such as soy flour. Dogs love them - Tessie, my roommate’s dog, will jump almost four feet in the air for one of these things, and when I take them to the shelter for the dogs on the adoption floor, even the pickiest dogs perk right up for one of these!

Dogs are man’s best friend; bake a batch of these and you’ll be their best friend!

Canine Crumpets

½ pound chicken livers
1 cup chicken stock
½ cup corn oil
¼ c. chopped parsley
1 cup powdered milk
1 cup rolled oats
½ cup brewer’s yeast
1 cup soy flour
1 cup cornmeal
3 cups whole wheat flour

Preheat the oven to 350. Slice the chicken livers into smaller pieces and cook them over high heat in a frying pan. When they are fully cooked through, place them in a blender with the chicken stock, corn oil, and parsley. Blend until liquefied.

In a large mixing bowl, combine all remaining ingredients and mix well. Add the chicken liver puree and mix again, using your hands - the dough will be very stiff.

When dough is completely mixed, break off a tennis-ball section, wrapping the rest in plastic. Take the dough ball and roll it into a quarter-inch thick sheet. Using a small cookie cutter, cut into shapes and place on a baking sheet lined with foil. Bake them 16-20 minutes or until golden brown. Allow to cool completely, then transfer to a plastic container. They will keep longer if stored in the refrigerator.

Pumpkin Pecan Biscotti

3 ½ c. unbleached all-purpose flour
2 ½ t. baking powder
½ t. salt
¼ cup melted butter
1 ¼ c. sugar
2 large eggs
2 large egg whites
1 cup grated raw pumpkin
1 cup toasted and chopped pecans
1 t. vanilla extract

Preheat the oven to 375. Combine the first three ingredients in a mixing bowl; set aside.

In a separate bowl, beat all remaining ingredients with a mixer until well-blended. Stir in the flour mixture until flour is fully incorporated and a moist dough is formed.

Lightly dust a countertop and your hands with flour. Divide the dough in half, shape each half into a log shape (about 11 x 1.5 inches). Place both logs on a cookie sheet lightly greased with butter and flatten them slightly. Bake for 25 minutes. When done, set aside to cool enough to handle.


Once logs are cool, transfer them to a cutting board and slice them crosswise into half-inch thick slides. Return the slices, cut side down, to the baking sheet. Bake for 10 minutes. Remove the baking sheets from the oven, turn the slices over, and bake for 10 more minutes or until they begin to turn golden-brown.

Let cool, serve dunked in hot coffee.


Roasted Garlic Focaccia

For dough starter:
2/3c. warm water
2.5t. active dry yeast
1c. flour

For dough:
2.5c. unbleached flour, plus extra for dusting
1 head roasted garlic
1/3c. water
1/3c. olive oil, plus extra to grease bowl and pan
1/3c. white wine
1t. salt

Olive oil, salt, and oregano for topping
Equipment: two large mixing bowls, cookie sheet lined w/ aluminum foil, water-filled cake pan

First, make the dough starter. In a mixing bowl, combine 2/3c. warm water and the yeast. Cover with a dish towel and let this sit for 10 minutes or until the water looks murky and bubbly around the edges.

Next, add 1c. of the flour to the bowl. Stir until all the flour is incorporated into the water and a sticky dough forms. Again, cover with a dish towel and let this sit for 30 minutes. During this time, the dough should puff up a little. Use this time to remove the individual cloves from a head of roasted garlic – if the individual cloves are soft like a paste, set them aside. If any are still a little firm, chop them up a bit and set aside. Also, coat the inside of the clean mixing bowl with a splash of olive oil and set aside.

Now it’s time to make the dough. Add 2.5c. flour, prepared roasted garlic, 1/3c. water, olive oil, white wine, and salt to the mixing bowl containing the dough starter. Combine all until fully incorporated and dough is formed. Turn the dough out onto a clean countertop dusted with flour, and knead the dough for 8-10 minutes, dusting the countertop with more flour if the dough starts to stick.

Once the kneading is complete, put the ball of dough into the mixing bowl coated with olive oil. Cover with a dish towel and set aside to rise for approximately one hour, or until the dough has doubled in size. In the meantime, line the cookie sheet with aluminum foil and grease the foil with a splash of olive oil.

Once the dough has risen, turn it out onto the greased cookie sheet. Stretch the dough so that it covers the cookie sheet. Once the dough has stretched, use your fingertips to create “dimples” in the dough – the surface should not be even. Be careful not to poke holes in the dough – small craters will do the trick. Once you’ve dimpled the dough, cover it with the dish towel and let it rise for an additional 45 minutes. Use this time to preheat the oven to 425, placing a water-filled cake pan on the bottom rack of the oven (this creates steam inside the oven).

Once the dimpled dough has risen, remove the dish towel and brush your dough with a thin coat of olive oil, and sprinkle it with a few pinches each of salt and oregano. Now it is time to bake – place the cookie sheet on the middle rack of the oven, above the water pan. Lower the oven temperature to 400, close the oven, and bake for 25-30 minutes.

Remove the focaccia from the oven. Once it is cool enough to handle safely, slice it up and serve.