Cooking for Dogs Baked Apple

Cooking for Dogs

It’s Spring in Vancouver and that means rain.

Lots of rain. Endless days of rain. When the weather turns bad, all I want is to cuddle up on the couch with my two dogs and eat comfort food. At the top of my list is warm, tasty, delicious apple pie just like my grandmother used to make.

The only problem? Her recipe had about a pound of butter in it and a cup of sugar.
That’s tasty as woof, but it’s not exactly good for me and it’s definitely not good to share with the dogs. I couldn’t sit there and enjoy a slice of pie knowing that they couldn’t have any, especially since they love apples. There had to be a way to get that sweet, spicy apple-y good flavour without all that butter and sugar.

It turns out, honey baked apples are every bit as good.
These lightly sweet baked apples have all my favourite parts of apple pie, plus a slightly tangy after taste from a squeeze of lemon. Plus they’re way easier to make than a pie! (Sometimes, being a little bit lazy can be really tasty too.)

You need:
2 Apples (Choose a variety suitable for baking, like Granny Smith, Honeycrisp or Braeburn)
1/3 c. honey
The juice of half a small lemon
¾ tsp. cinnamon (I don’t recommend using pre-made Apple Pie spice as many contain nutmeg, a spice that can be toxic to dogs)
Pre-heat oven to 300F.
Peel and core apples, then slice them into ¼” slices.

In a small bowl, whisk honey with a squeeze of lemon and the cinnamon. Dip apple slices in the honey mixture and place on a parchment lined baking sheet. Bake for 20 – 30 minutes, until apples are baked through and golden brown.
The dogs were wild over these baked treats.
They were already pretty big fans of fresh, crisp apples, but these were over-the-top good. They both worked hard to get a taste, doing lots of tricks to earn them. I would definitely make them baked apple treats again. I really enjoyed them too. I sprinkled a bit of granola over the top to get that streusel-ly feeling to it and it definitely took care of my apple pie craving. I bet these would be really tasty with maple syrup instead of honey.

Have you ever tried baked apples? What did you think?

Jodi is a canine nutrition and small animal naturopathy student hailing from beautiful Vancouver, BC. (That’s in Canada, eh?) She loves to experiment in the kitchen, creating tasty (and healthy) treats for her two dogs, Felix & Kolchak and the rest of her family. Jodi’s blog, Kol’s Notes follows the antics of the irrepressible Kolchak as he celebrates good food, good friends and the good life.