Connor's Corner: Happy Birthday Einstein!

This week was a huge birthday week for us. I guess not really so much with the human birthdays, but with the animal birthdays. We had two human and 4 pets to celebrate. I know half of you that are reading this probably think I'm a little nutso, but you have to understand something. I am around animals all the time. I work with animals. I grew up with animals. There wasn't a time where we didn't have at least two pets in the house. At one point we had 3 dogs, 6 cats, two birds, 4 guinea pigs (two females, so the store said, but two more showed up in the cage weeks later) 2 firebelly newts and a fish. We never actually had a Pear tree though. Anywho, we never actually had birthday parties for the pets. It was always just a verbal, "Hey (pet's name here) Happy Birthday." As always, they looked up at us with the little confused faces wondering what we were saying. Then looking at each other, with what I like to call the "I don't know what they are saying... lets just stand there and hope they go away..or feed us," face. So cute they are. So, when my little Steiner turned one, I decided it was time for me to learn how to make doggie cakes. His first B-day cake was peanut butter and bananas. It had yogurt and carrots for a topping. He loved it. I threw a little Spiderman candle on top to make it official. This years cake was named "Peanut Butter delight." I used most of the same ingredients as the first cake, because there are only so many things that you can give to dogs. Here is what you need to make your pooch a cake.

1 cup white or whole wheat flour
1 tsp baking soda
1/4 cup peanut butter
1/4 cup vegetable oil
1 cup of shredded carrots
1 tsp vanilla
1/3 cup honey
1 egg
12 oz cream cheese
cinnamon (to taste)
carob chips/or chocolate yogurt drops

Start by heating your oven to 350 degrees.
Mix together your flour and baking soda.

Add all of your remaining ingredients and mix well.

Pour your mix into a well sprayed nonstick pan. The instructions say 40 minutes. I used a 9x9 pan. This recipe is a small batch, so it was very shallow in the pan. I ended up cooking it for 20 minutes, not 40.

He always sits underneath my feet while I cook. I have almost crushed him on numerous occasions.

"Mom, is it done yet!?"

I made a different topping this year. I decided to go with a cream cheese frosting.

"Mom, is that my cake?"

I didn't have any carob chips, so instead, I used some Chocolate flavored yogurt drops. You can get these at any Petsmart or Petsupermarket. I put them in my processor and made them dusty.