Lavender Paper Hearts: Happy Birthday Bailey & Pup Cupcake Recipe!!

So the in-house model, Bailey, who belongs to my sister and brother in law, celebrated his first birthday on Sunday!! Even if it's a bit silly, we wanted to get together to celebrate our favorite little dog! First, let me tell you a little about Bailey.

Bailey is not just any ol' dog. See, Bailey is super helpful with the shop. So he's not only the in-house model, but he also supervises my work from time to time:

He's also a dedicated taste tester and focuses on quality control:

For my Bailey approved Dog Treat recipe - click HERE.

And, let's be honest, he makes my bowties look extra dapper:

Lavender Paper Hearts Handmade: Satin Fancy Pet Bowtie

But he also helps out in my other line of work - teaching:

Bailey loves to help lesson plan... See? He's letting me know which article is useful for class by drooling (or sometimes chewing) on the articles he likes.

He also watches me like a hawk to make sure I'm fair when grading:

Since Bailey is so helpful, it seemed only fair that we really make sure his birthday was extra special. I fell into a Pinterest loophole one evening a few months back and came across a dog cupcake recipe. I knew that I could modify the recipe to suit Bailey's tastes. It's his birthday after all so I figured he might as well get what he likes!! Plus, as I found with the dog treat recipes out there, a lot of the recipes have ingredients in them that I just don't think dogs need. I eliminated the honey, for example, because my version has bananas that will give them lots of flavor - plus dogs don't really need honey?! I mean, I guess it can't hurt, but I figured that if I can easily eliminated it, why not. (Pro-tip: I also halved the recipe since he's the only dog around. Extra cupcakes can be frozen and defrosted when needed).

Peanut Butter Banana Pup Cupcakes
(makes 6 big cupcakes)

Ingredients
1/4 teaspoon of baking soda
1/4 cup plain yogurt (I used Greek)
1/4 cup peanut butter
1 Tbs water
1/2 heaping cup ripe bananas (1 large banana or 2 small)
3/4 cups whole wheat flour1/8 cup oatmeal
1 teaspoon of baking powder
1 egg
2 heaping Tbs grated cheese

Optional Frosting:
1/2 stick of low fat cream cheese, room temperature
2-3 Tbs creamy peanut butter

Preheat oven at 375 degrees and grease muffin tins well with butter or a spray. Don't use paper liners. Mix flour, oatmeal, baking powder and baking soda together in a large mixing bowl. Blend the yogurt, water, peanut butter, and egg together and then stir in the cheese and banana. Add the cheese mix to the flour mixture and stir until completely mixed. Have no fear if the batter looks super thick. It will still cook up gloriously. Spoon into the muffin tins, filling each cup about three quarters full. This will make big cupcakes. I would make the cupcakes smaller next time since Bailey is a smaller dog. If you want to do the same, fill each cup just under 1/2 way full.

Bake pup-cakes for 20 minutes, or until a toothpick poked in the middle of a cupcake comes out clean.

*If your dog is allergic to wheat, you can try using Brown Rice flour as a substitution. I haven't used it, but in my researching, I read it could be good substitution.

The original recipe had a frosting of sorts, but I left that off. If you really want your dog to have frosting, I would use half a stick of low fat cream cheese at room temperature and mix it with 2-3 Tbs of creamy peanut butter. Cream together and slather gloriously on the pup cupcakes. I will say, however, that Bailey enjoyed them without frosting so it's not necessary!!

Action shot: Bailey doesn't eat human food, so he was kind of unsure of what to do with the pup-cake. I had to tear it apart a little bit for him before he dug in.