Bunny Friendly Treats

For our next bunny recipe we will look at making bunny trail mix. After doing a spot of research I have found that bunnies can eat grains such as oats however only in moderation as too much starch in a rabbit’s diet can cause diarrhoea. As a rough guide it is advised that rabbits are only fed between  11% to 14% starch as too much may cause digestive problems.

The next ingredient in our ‘trail mix’ is raisins. Wherever possible it is advised that that you try and use low-sugar or even sugarless varieties as raisins are high in sugar and feeding your rabbits too many raisins may cause diarrhoea.

Sunflower seeds are a great source of natural oil (38-50% oil; Wan et. al. 1979) that improves the health of rabbits.  However it is suggested that their diets should not contain more than 20% sunflower seeds.

Rabbits love carrots, I mean you just need to watch Bugs Bunny or any other cartoon representation of rabbits to see that they are a favourite treat for your little ones. However carrots- as with many fresh vegetables and fruits are high in sugar and therefore should only be given to your pet bunny in small amounts.

After having researching our key ingredients we can now turn our attention to the making of these treats:

Ingredients:

1 tsp raisins

1tsp sunflower seeds

1tbsp oats

1 carrot (grated)

¼ tsp honey

First grate your carrot into a bowl – pf course your bunny will eat the carrot in any shape of form but for ease of construction its best to grate it.

Add all of the dry mixtures and give a good stir.

I am using the teeniest bit of honey to help me bind the ingredients. Add the honey and using your fingers make bar shapes and placed onto a cling film lined baking tray. This recipe actually only makes three 'bars' which is convenient for me as we have three bunnies.

Leave to rest in the fridge until treat time

Carrot cupcake fail

My adventures in baking have often led me to trying out substitutes to the traditional ingredients such as using different types of flours (einkorn,spelt, gluten free etc) or dates instead of butter. 

This time the main ingredient that I was replacing was sugar but seeing as I was replacing one thing I thought that I might as well go the whole hog so my dear readers I present to you; 

Sugar free, gluten free, saturated-fat free carrot and pecan cupcakes. 

Well they would have been if I hadn't had the urge to ice them. 

The recipe I used can be found here. Only I used wheat free flour instead of almond.

http://eatthecookie.wordpress.com/2012/02/19/carrot-cake-cupcakes/

My mother made a stir fry last week (bare with me this story does relate) and instead of using rice like normal people would she decided that it would be far more nutritional to use shredded cauliflower. Alas (and I have no idea why...) a lot of this cauliflower did not get eaten so it was banished to the depths of the fridge. 

There it lay slowly festering and seeping into the other foods and quite frankly stinking to high heaven. Remember this little tale because we shall be deviating it in a few paragraphs time.  

For the icing I made a simple cream cheese butter icing using golden icing sugar. The golden sugar in this icing gives off a slightly caramel flavour and your icing will be lightly golden. 

I first mixed the icing sugar in with melted butter to make a smooth butter icing before adding a table spoonful of cream cheese -  does something smell a bit funky to you? 

 As it turned out the cream cheese had fallen victim to the great cauliflower invasion  yet I didn't realise that this was the case until  after I had already decorated the cupcakes. 

Anyone for a carrot cupcake with cauliflower icing?