Day 256

Well, I guess I've oficially joined the ranks of the mommie blogs. People are asking me for recipes now. I can't claim to be a dog cake expert, but the basic rule for dogs cakes is no sugar. You can use a little molasses or fresh fruit for sweetening, but sugar is a no no. Wheat flour and oats are better for dogs too, although I'm sure you can use white flour if you insist. If you want to try your hand at a dog cake, this recipe for Apple Cake courtesy of Three Dog Bakery is especially tasty. Our dogs absolutely love it and I've been known to eat a slice or two myself.

2 cups wheat flour
1/2 cup quick rolled oats
2 teaspoons baking powder
2 teaspoons ground cinnamon
6 tablespoons canola oil
1/2 cup molasses
1 1/4 cup unsweetened applesauce
1 large egg
1 teaspoon pure vanilla extract
1 fresh apple, cored and chopped


That's it. Preheat your oven to 350 degrees. Mix together the flour, oats, baking powder and cinnamon in one bowl and the egg, molasses, oil, applesauce and vanilla in another. Start adding the dry ingredients to the bowl with the wet ingredients until you have a smooth batter. Then fold in the chopped fresh apple. Spread the batter evenly in the cake pan and bake for 25 to 35 minutes. For a cool looking dog cake, find some small, round cake rings and make a three layer cake like the picture above.

For the frosting, use 8 ounces of low fat cream cheese, 2 tablespoons plain yogurt, 2 tablespoons honey and 2 tablespoons flour. This is actually quite tasty and completely safe for dogs. If your frosting is too stiff to spread properly, just add a little more yogurt until you get the right consistency. If you happen to have one of those cake decorating turntables, you'll find that it's a lot easier to spread the frosting on the cake neatly. I don't think I could decorate a cake without a turntable anymore. You can't leave cream cheese frosting in the fridge for a week like a regular buttercream frosting. The cream cheese will start to crack and look bad fairly quickly. Usually this is not a problem, because the dogs eat up the cake almost immediately.

Baking a cake sounds more enjoyable than what I actually did today. Somehow a large tree limb fell on top of the air conditioner compressor last night. The limb was so heavy that I had to cut it in pieces with a saw before I was able to remove it. This isn't the first time this has happened either. Large tree limbs have just dropped off the Oak trees in the back yard several times before for no apparent reason. These falling tree branches always manage to destroy something like a bird bath or a potted plant when they hit the ground. Luckily these things usually happen at night while we're asleep. I'd hate for a large branch to fall and hit the dogs.

Apple has this free case program for the new iPhones to get people to put those rubber bumpers on their phones. It's supposed to fix the antenna problems that causes dropped calls if you hold the phone a certain way. Apple also sells a special dock for recharging the phone. If your put the skin on your phone the way Apple recommends, it won't fit in the docking station. Come on guys. Get your act together. Surely you could design an iPhone dock that wouldn't require you to take the skin off your phone every time you recharge the battery.

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