Its A Doggy Birthday

It really is a doggy birthday.  Meet the birthday boy, a Chihuahua named Jo Jo.  He belongs to good friends of ours.  He had his birthday this week, and his human mom thought it would be fun for us to have an impromptu celebration.

Kara was especially excited about the thought of a dog birthday party. She had me take her to the store so she could buy him a gift.  She also wanted to make something to take to the party.  It was her idea to make dog bone shaped cookies.  I have about 100 cookies cutters, but one of the ones I DON'T have is a dog bone shape.   I did have  toll house pre-cut cookies in the fridge. It was her idea to push two of them together and push in the middle to make a bone.

When they came out of the oven, they looked a bit "blob like." Since they were still very soft and pliable, she just reshaped them.

They turned out pretty good, and this entire plate of cookies disappeared very quickly.

I had planned on making cupcakes to take with us.  Kara was the one who thought I should make them look like Jo Jo.  We kind of improvised the recipe from  the Hello Cupcake book. We did not have everything in the book, so we kind of winged it with what we had on hand.  I started with a basic chocolate cupcake, and frosted it with dark chocolate frosting.   I cut a regular size marshmellow in half to make the snout.

I frosted the snout (which was kind of hard because it did not want to stay put) and then added candy eyes and nose.  The book calls for black jelly beans.  We cant stand black jelly beans, so we of course did not have them at home. I did have M & Ms and Reeses Pieces which worked just as well.
For the ears I cut a Nilla wafer in half and frosted it. After a couple of mouth fails, the decided it looked better without  a mouth

I had red gel and mini dog bones on hand, but  didnt like how it looked.  I used a thin mint for the ears of this cupcake but they were a bit too big. ( we  also did not have very many to do all the cupcakes)

Kara and I made a giant mess on the kitchen table while making them

but soon we had a cupcake tray full of cupcakes to take along.

They were not perfect but the kids LOVED them, and so did Jo Jo. (no, he was not allowed to eat one since it was pure chocolate)   Happy Birthday little guy!!

I will be linking a doggy birthday on these linky parties HERE!