Our little Pepper turned 2 years old! It has been years since I wrote about her on the blog (you can see my first post here), and as you can see, she isn’t little any more. This year, we celebrated by making her a peanut butter dog cake!
Peanut butter is Peppers favorite flavor, so it was an obvious choice for our dog cake. The peanut butter also doubles as a frosting, which is appropriate because no cake is complete without frosting!
I tried a bit of the cake, being made completely of human food, and it was good. Not sweet like traditional birthday cake, but moist and flavorful.
Ingredients explained for the Peanut Butter Dog Cake:
- Flour: I wanted to choose a flour that was less processed, but had a light texture. I went with garbanzo bean flour, but there are plenty of good choices. I think oat flour would have been my second choice, and you could also try almound flour or coconut flour.
- Carrots: I did not want to add sugar to this cake (trust me, Pepper doesn’t need help getting wound up!). Therefore, I added carrots to sweeten it. I grated them on the fine part of my grater so that they mixed in a little more smoothly.
- Baking powder: You need something to give the cake lift, and I went with baking powder because it is already mixed with everything it needs to work, whereas baking soda is not, and it is much stronger.
- Applesauce: This adds a little more sweetness while replacing any oil you might need to keep the cake moist. Pepper didn’t mind that her cake was low fat, either.
- Peanut Butter: This flavored the cake, and acted as a frosting. It also adds some fat, keeping the cake moist.
- Egg: This helps to bind the cake ingredients together. This cake was a little crumbly, but again, Pepper didn’t mind!
You could also make this cake into cupcakes instead of the layer cake. Reduce cooking time to 10-12 minutes for cupcakes.
I didn’t let pepper eat this cake all at once as I’m certain it would be too much. I cut it into 4 slices, and it kept well in the fridge inbetween celebrations. She ate each slice in one big mouthful!
- ½ cup garbonzo bean flour
- 1 tsp baking powder
- ⅓ cup unsweetened apple sauce
- 2 TBS natural creamy peanut butter, plus more for frosting
- 1 large egg
- ¼ cup finely grated carrots
- Preheat oven to 350 F.In a small bowl, whisk together the flour and baking powder.
- Mix in apple sauce, peanut butter, the egg, and the carrots. Stir until just combined.
- Divide batter among 2 baking ramikins or small cake pans, about 4½ inches wide. I used pot pie ramikins, so I lined them with parchment paper so the cakes would come out easily.
- Bake in the preheat oven for 20 minutes, or until a toothpick inserted comes out clean.
- Frost with peanut butter, and sprinkle with dog treats if desired.
Recipe adapted from Fix Feast Flair and Jen Elizabeth’s Journals.
