Homemade Horse Treats

I ordered a jumbo-sized bucket of Uncle Jimmy's Squeezy Buns, Moe's favorite treat, less than a month ago. Fatty Lumpkin does a fair amount of shameless mugging for them, and I frequently oblige him. (Stood still for grooming? Have a treat. Picked up all four hooves? Have a treat. Looked cute? Have a treat.) Uncle Jimmy does not sell his Squeezy Buns for cheap; at the rate I'm going through them, I'll be spending more on horse treats than my own food soon.

Since I'm unemployed and enjoy cooking, I decided to mix up some homemade horse treats to supplement Moe's Squeezy Bun habit. The result? A moist, chewy treat that's easy to make and requires only a few ingredients!

To make your own horse treats, you'll need:

• 1 apple
• 2 carrots
• 2.5 cups rolled oats
• 1 cup honey
• 1 tbsp. vegetable oil (plus more for greasing muffin tin)

The procedure for making these is very easy:

• Preheat oven to 300 degrees F.
• Line a muffin tin with silicon or paper liners, or grease well with vegetable oil.
• Shred or grate the apple and carrots. I used my mini food processor, but you can grate them by hand, too. 
• Combine shredded apple, carrots, oats, honey, and oil in a large bowl and mix thoroughly.
• Form into balls about 1.5" in diameter (slightly bigger than a golf ball) and place in lined/greased muffin tin and bake for 45 minutes, until firm. 
• Remove from oven and allow to cool; treats can be refrigerated to speed cooling.

Makes 12 generously-sized treats.

This is a pretty flexible recipe. You can substitute just about any sort of oat- rolled, quick-cooking, instant. Horses aren't picky. Likewise, you can use molasses instead of honey if that's what you have in your cabinets. You can probably also use corn syrup. (I always have some around from pecan pie season.)

Moe and greedy baby Trigger loved these. They're a little moist, so they made the inside of my jacket kind of sticky. But when don't I come home from the barn kind of sticky?

Anyone else have a horse treat recipe? Who's in for publishing a cookbook?