Birthday Boy!

My little man turned 2 yesterday.  He must have had an exciting time at daycare because he was too tired to party when he got home. He briefly played with his presents, ate a pupcake, and then went to sleep.

We had a little celebration on Sunday, so I make Arthur doggy cupcakes (pupcakes).  The recipe made enough "batter" so that Arthur had leftovers that he could bring to daycare the next day to share with his pals.  I modified a recipe that I found on this site.

Here's the recipe for Arthur's mini pupcakes:

Ingredients

• 1 cup of wheat flour
• 1 tsp baking soda
• 1/4 cup of natural peanut butter
• 1/4 cup of a mix of vegetable/flax seed oil
• 1 cup of shredded carrots
• 1/3 cup of pumpkin puree
• 1/4 cup of honey

Directions

Combine flour and baking soda in a mixing bowl then mix in remaining ingredients.  You'll notice that the batter is more like a dough, which is because the original recipe called for egg instead of pumpkin.  You can definitely add more of the wet ingredients to thin out the consistency to have it more like a traditional cake batter but these turned out fine.  You could also skip the pumpkin and use 1 egg.  

Next, fill your mini cupcake wrappers. If you stick with the doughier batter, just roll into balls and pat them into the cups.  I started baking these using a mini cupcake machine but it was just scorching the tops and the bottoms.  When I switched to the oven I baked at 350 degrees for about 10 minutes - check at 8. 

For the icing: I used the lowest fat cream cheese I could find, a tsp of pumpkin puree, a pinch of cinnamon, and a 1/2 tsp of honey.  

I then decorated the tops with dog treats that I cut/ moulded into doggie paw prints -- if the dog was missing a toe.  (I made a bunch with three toes, then realized that I should have four but Dan said the leave them because they were cute).  I also left some of the pupcakes plain and some with a peanut butter glaze, that was just natural peanut butter mixed with a tiny bit of flour...just in case some of the dogs couldn't have lactose. 

I completely forgot to take a photo of the finished pupcake, although you can kind of see it in this photo below (unlike Arthur who is completely oblivious).  I think I need to start writing down my plans for posts to ensure that I take any necessary photos.

Oh, what's this?

Om, nom, nom

Here's Arthur with his new toy

Alex & Arthur