Horse Cookies!

As in, cookies for horses. What were you thinking?

I finally had a chunk of time to thaw out those spent grains from the last batch of beer, and make a batch of horse treats. I drained the grains in a colander but not enough as you'll see in a bit. Here's the recipe:

6 cups spent grains

4 carrots, shredded

2 cups molasses + honey (any proportion will do)

1 bag Canada Peppermints, broken into pieces

5 T. coconut oil

L-R: First, second and third batches. See the difference in color and shape?

Here's where things got interesting. The mix was very watery, but I tamped it down into mini muffin tins and baked for 50 minutes or so at 325. The sugary liquid boiled over and caramelized and the cookies were too soft. While that was going on, I tried a different approach; for the second batch I squeezed the liquid out of handfuls of the mix and placed the little balls on a cookie sheet. Those were baked for 40 minutes. What I found was the first batch was so soft that when I took them out and let them cool a bit, I couldn't get them out of the muffin tins without them breaking. So I took each one, squeezed it into a ball, and put them each onto a cookie sheet and baked them again for about 20 minutes, trying to dry them out. The second round, squeezed out but not in the tins, fell apart in the oven. When they came out I took each one, formed it into a ball again, and put it on the cooling rack. 

The last batch worked the way I wanted it to: each handful of mix was squeezed out and then pressed into the muffin tins and baked for 40 minutes. Then I turned the oven off and left them overnight to finish drying out. This morning they were the correct shape and consistency. Now I know!

Mocha got to eat the grain crumbs from the second attempt - he can't eat a lot of these because the sugar content is so high, but he certainly approved of them!