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LY Chinchillas

Chinchilla Love and Chinchilla Advice!

Chinchilla Cookie Recipe

To celebrate the inevitable approach of spring – finally! – I’ve decided to share my chinchilla cookie recipe with everyone, so that our fur babies can have a delicious treat to celebrate with us!
My mentality about these baked treats is more “baked” than “treat” – offering your chinchillas their daily diet in a different form or composition is a great way to encourage healthy eating
habits and boost consumption! Diversifying is always a fun way to prevent boredom, too. These cookies are simple to make, and fun to consume.

Chinchilla Cookies

Makes 20-25 Small Cookies

Prep Time: 20 minutes / Bake Time: 2 hours

DOUGH: For the base of my cookie dough, I use a mix of pellets and hays. Since my chins’ diet (h ps://lychinchillas.com/2014/11/12/the-ly-chinchillas-diet/) consists of Manna Pro and
Mazuri, I like to use 1 cup Mazuri and 1/2 cup Manna Pro. You can use the chin feed your chinchillas prefer! Mix the pellets with a variety of hays: a combination of Timothy and Alfalfa hay
“dust” – you know, the leafy, dusty, tiny particles left over from hay bags. Sift through the hay dust to remove larger stems, as they won’t hold well in the dough. Place the 1.5 cup of pellets
and 1.5 cup of hay dust in a food processor or blender, and blend until everything becomes a fine powder.
ADDITIONS: Place the mixture into a stirring bowl and add in one tablespoon of cold-milled ground flax seed and 1/8 cup of organic rolled oats. Separately, I prepare my water mixture, with
9 parts water to 1 part unsweetened apple juice (I use a juice press to press the juice from fresh fiji apples, for taste).

MIXING: I make sure all the dry elements are well-mixed, and begin adding in my water/apple juice mixture li le by li le, kneading the dough as I go. Hays and pellets have an absorptive
reaction, so kneading by hand is the best way to tell how saturated the dough is.

REFRIGERATE: When the dough is at a cookie dough consistency, I place the mixture into a plastic bag. Then, I fla en the dough in the bag and refrigerate for several hours in order for the
dough to set and become more easily mold-able (this refrigeration step is optional, but recommended).
MOLDING: When I’m ready, I’ll make small balls of dough, press them flat, and use a rolling pin to fla en the cookies evenly. I personally don’t use cookie cu ers, because I prefer the
natural shape each cookie has – but I’m sure they would be adorable if you chose to use shapes. Keep in mind that due to the consistency of the dough, it’ll probably take some time to form
your cookies into dense enough shapes to bake successfully.

BAKING: Finally, I’ll bake the cookies at 200 degrees for approximately 2 hours – don’t forget to check the oven from time to time to gauge the cookie’s status. The low heat prevents burning,
while allowing the cookie to fully bake through. Mold during storage can be a problem for home-cooked chinchilla goods if the water content has not been adequately baked out, so it’s
important to make sure the final cookies are dry and bri le. Also, chins love the crunch!

STORAGE: Remove the cookies from the oven and allow them to dry overnight at room temperature. Keep cookies stored in an airtight food container in the freezer and serve as needed for a
delicious treat! Since most of the moisture content has been baked out of the treats, freezer storage does very li le to alter them.
There you go! Healthy cookies for your flu alls. There are plenty of other versions out there that include pumpkin puree or molasses, but we opt for a more basic cookie treat that isn’t too
much of a guilty pleasure! My chins enjoy 2-3 cookies per week as a supplement to their existing diet – although adding in these cookies means decreasing all other treat consumption.
Cheers!

LY Chinchillas Treat Donation

Buy delicious hay-based treats or apple sticks for the entire LY Chinchillas family!

$5.00

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Posted in Chinchillas, DIY, Motherhood, Photography and tagged 2 hours, 200 degrees, add water, alfalfa, apple, apple juice, bake, bake time, baked, baked goods, baking, biscuit, biscuits,
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cookies, crunch, crunchy, delicious, direction, directions, dough, doughy, dry, dust, eat, eating, flat, flax seed, flaxseed, flower, flowers, food, food processor, freeze, freezing, handmade,
happy, hay, hay dust, hays, heat, homemade, how to, knead, love, manna pro, manna pro premium, mazuri, mix, mixing, molasses, nom, organic, oven, paws, photography, prep time,
pumpkin puree, recipe, recipes, rolled oats, slow bake, slow cook, small, storage, timothy, treat, treats, water, yummy on March 11, 2015 by LY Chinchillas. 7 Comments

7 comments

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3. Daria says:
July 20, 2015 at 3:50 PM
Thank you for a great recipes! I just started to make a cookies and I have a question. How many glasses of water do you usually add in the dough? I am using Oxbow chinchillas pellets
and after mixing and adding everything together I ended up having a huge bowl of dough and it fall apart in my hands no ma er how much water I add. After I added a bit more oats it
became be er but still I am afraid when I put it in the oven it will just fall in to a small pieces.
Thank you)

REPLY
1. LY Chinchillas says:
July 21, 2015 at 9:14 PM
Hi Daria! In my experience, the less water, the be er – it’s always best to use a li le bit of fresh-squeezed apple juice (or organic apple juice) and water to mix into the dry goodness, but
it should never reach the consistency of a human cookie dough. In fact, the drier the be er: the dough only needs to be held together very loosely by the liquid; most of the cookie
element should be created with compression. The denser and more compact the dough on the pan, the more likely the cookie will be held together nicely! Of course, it takes practice
and patience – and a lot of time, because slow-baking is the only way to get as much moisture out of the dough as possible to avoid molding after baking. Best of luck and let me know
how it goes!

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