Weekly Drool Recipe: Seri’s Grain-Free Dog Treats via Tasty Yummies Blog

Increasingly, gluten-free diets are becoming common in American households. BestBullySticks.com knows that these grain-free meals aren’t just for the humans anymore, either. Beth at Tasty Yummies blog has been eating gluten-free for 7 years and shares her great recipes with her readers. By a stroke of irony, Beth’s Miniature Bull Terrier, Seri has a gluten allergy and needs grain-free food and treats. Beth wanted to create a special 2^nd birthday surprise for her special dog and that’s what she has shared with us today—Seri’s Grain Free Dog Treats! Keep reading to learn more about Seri, Beth and these great treats!

Seri came into our lives nearly two years ago at a time that I never thought I would be getting a new dog. It was much sooner than either one of us imagined that we would be doing the puppy thing again!

We patiently waited for the litter to be born to find out if we would be getting a pup and we soon found out that we were in fact getting a sweet little white baby with the tiniest little spot on her bum! We thought long and hard about a name and ultimately decided on Seri (inspired by the word Serigraphy – another word for screen printing). We picked Seri up the day before my birthday and she was so tiny and sweet. We of course fell in love with her instantly.

Seri is a very independent dog and for all of the amazing cuddle sessions that we have, she also loves to be on her own, either in one of her crates or wrapped up in a pile of blankets in our bed. Oh and Seri has a serious, serious love for playing ball. If that dog sees a ball she goes nuts. No matter how tired she is or where we are, if we pull out one of her balls, she is ready for it. Seri has this ability to make everyone around her smile and she walks with this bounce in her step that makes me happy every time I see it.

If you can believe the irony in this, Seri is also on a gluten-free diet. Just a month or two into having her, even with the most expensive organic dry food money could buy, Seri just seemed to have issues with grains. She would be a bit itchy. After speaking with her and a holistic veterinarian we decided to make the switch to a grain-free all raw meat diet. Seri’s skin, coat and all around health immediately responded to the diet and we have never gone back since.

Seri’s Grain-Free Dog Treats: Gluten-free, Grain-free, Dairy-free, Sugar-free
(Makes about 2 dozen or so, depending on the size)

Ingredients
1 cup potato starch, plus a little more for rolling
1 cup almond flour
1 teaspoon baking powder
dash of salt
1/4 cup melted coconut oil
1/4 cup natural peanut butter (chunky or creamy)
1/4 cup low-sodium beef stock (you can also use veggie stock or water)
1/4 cup shredded carrots

Directions
1. Preheat the oven to 350º F and line a rimmed baking sheet with parchment paper. In a large bowl whisk together the potato starch, almond flour, baking powder and salt.

2. In a medium sized bowl, whisk together the melted coconut oil, peanut butter, stock and carrots. Add the wet ingredients to the dry and stir well to combine. Feel the dough, if it feels like it is too crumbly and needs more moisture, add more broth, if it feels to wet, add more potato starch. Form the dough into a disk and wrap in plastic wrap and place in the freezer for about 15 minutes or so, to chill it.

3. Sprinkled your surface and rolling pin with potato starch, and roll out the dough. I did mine in two or three batches. Using whatever cookie cutter you would like cut out the cookies and place on the parchment paper lined baking sheet. Place in the oven and bake until lightly browned and slightly crisp, about 20-25 minutes. Allow to cool.

4. I made a bunch of different sized treats for Seri, and I also made one big one to make her a “cake” with, I just iced it with a thin layer of chunky peanut butter and layered it. She loved it. She also loved the taste of the uncooked dough, too, so she may have eaten some of that while I was rolling out cookies

Recipe Note: I pulled the recipe together as I went along and I was mostly happy with it. The dough was a tad crumbly so the finished treats don’t look perfect, but one of the best things about a dog is their unconditional love and their lack of judgment. Seri is OK with how this look and even more OK with how they taste. Pretty much the best dinner guest, if you ask me. If I had eggs in the house, I probably would have added 1 to this recipe, to help bind the dough, but I realized just as I was making these, that I actually didn’t have any eggs, so I just went without and made it work. Feel free to add whatever your dog’s favorites are to the recipe. Seri loves carrots so I just grated up 1 carrot to add in, she also loves kale and cucumbers. A lot of the time if I am making fresh juice, as long as she can have everything in there, I will scrape some of the pulp into her bowl, she loves it.