Craft ii - Homemade Dog Treats

I'm not sure I can really count this as my first craft of 2009, since technically I made them in December, so I'll just classify this as Craft ii.

For Christmas my aunt gave our dog, Malin, a set of bone-shaped cookie cutters along with a dog treat recipe. I was inspired to make him a batch of chicken flavored treats. After those were done, I thought, "What the heck? I might as well make a batch of beef ones, too. This way Malin would be able to share with his friends."

I wanted to give each of Malin's buddies a personalized container filled with treats, so I went out and bought a few Gladware tupperware containers, some pretty Alpha stickers and ribbon with paw prints. I proceeded to spell out Malin's puppy pal's names on the lids, fill them will chicken and beef bones and wrap them with the ribbon.

Malin loves them! His pal Vito seemed to think they were tasty. And his other friend Bailey scarfed them down, too. So I guess they are good enough to eat. :)

If you are interested in making similar treats, here is the recipe:
Basic Yeast Dog Treats
Mix together:
3 1/2 cup unbleached flour
2 cup whole wheat flour
1 cup cornmeal
1/2 cup skim milk powder
1 tablespoon (or 1 package) dry yeast
3 1/2 cups lukewarm chicken or meat broth

Preheat oven to 300ºF

Dissolve the yeast in the lukewarm chicken or meat broth. The richer this broth is, the better your dog will like the biscuits. Let yeast broth mixture set 10 min. Then stir in flour mixture. Roll resulting dough out 1/4" thick*. Cut dog biscuit shapes from dough. Brush biscuits with egg wash. Bake on greased cookie sheets at 300º for 45 min. Then turn off oven and leave in overnight to finish hardening** (makes 60 medium-sized biscuits)
*The dough is SUPER sticky. I recommend working in batches and lightly flouring your work surface first. (Frankly, you should probably sprinkle the dough with flour, too).
**I wanted the treats to be really hard, like store-bought bones, so after the 45 minutes at 300ºF, I lowered the oven temp to 200ºF and let the bones dry out for a while.