Today I whipped up some dog treats for our pup, Loki, using a strategy that’s proven sometimes delicious and sometimes disastrous: baking without using a recipe. Whether out of curiosity (“I wonder what’ll happen if I add another egg…?”) or total laziness (“I don’t care how it comes out; I just want a sweet dessert-ish bread-like thing!”), it’s fun to see what happens when you combine some desired ingredients, bake at the magical 350 degrees Fahrenheit, and give it a gander after 15 minutes or so.

When baking without recipes, you sacrifice consistency (and often, success) in favor of speed and a much easier cleanup. Sometimes it’s worth it, sometimes, not so much. How’d it go this time?

Here’re the ingredients I used:

A bit of cooked rice,

Some steamed sweet potato,

An egg,

And a bit o’ bacon grease.

These dudes were combined in the same pot used to steam the sweeties,

Doled out in cookie-like dollops,

And baked for a total of 30 minutes.

Results?

Pup approved.

Enthusiastically!

Verdict on this experiment? Delicious! Loki boy loved ’em. (I think the bacon grease really shined through!) Initially I hoped for more of a cookie-like consistency, but they turned out really soft (think coconut macaroon) with just a bit of bite around the edges. Next time I’ll make the balls a bit smaller for a training treat sized morsel, but these’ll stay in our fridge and be broken up for distribution during this week’s training/play sessions.

That was fun to post! Stay tuned for future episodes of baking without recipes. 🙂