Inspired by Pitlandia‘s post about home made sweet potato treats for Athena, I decided to try my hand at making some for Ray-ray.  He loves the Sam’s Yam rawhide chews but they’re kind of pricey and I wanted to see if I could make something close to that.  Those are nice thick slices that take a couple of minutes to eat. 

So, my first batch I cut with my Pampered Chef crinkle cutter.  These might have been ok, but I’m not a very straight cutter and rather than make a stabilizing cut on the bottom, I wanted to keep all of the skin intact.  I did lightly oil the baking sheet and baked these for ever and ever about 7 hours total on 200 degrees for 5 hours and 250 for the last two.  I ended up blotting a lot of oil every time I flipped these which was every hour. 

They smelled great baking (if you like sweet potatoes-I don’t) so my hubby volunteered to give them a taste test. 

He said they taste like sweet potatoes, which, I guess, is what we were going for.  These ended up being firm but still softer in the middle and chewy, which I was going for.  The downside was they’re kind of ugly.

The second batch, I cut with my mandolin and I baked on 250 degrees on a parchment paper-lined baking sheet.  These I also turned each hour-ish but only baked for maybe 3 or 4 hours.  They were less uniform in size but all the same thickness, or thin-ness, if you will.  The smaller chips were crunchier like actual chips and the larger slices were a nice medium between the two.  Chewy-crunchy and definitely prettier.

All in all, I’m pretty happy with the results and for the price of a sweet potato, you can’t beat this.  Of course it makes me want to buy a food dehydrator, but since my kitchen is about as big as a whisper, I don’t think that is going to happen.

Have you tried a sweet potato dog chew recipe yet?  What have you found to be successful?