So, it's your favourite hen's birthday or she just laid her first egg. You want to celebrate by giving them a yummy treat that won't make them too fat and unhealthy. This easy suet cake recipe is great for your hen, or rooster's, special day!
Introduction
A suet cake is just a block of suet mixed with some other ingredients, so if you're not a great cook, you should still be able to follow this recipe! Suet is used in both savoury and sweet puddings, such as steak & kidney pudding, and jam roly-poly. It is also used to make pastry, like dumplings, haggis, and Christmas pudding. Suet can come in many flavours, but any can be used to make a cake for chickens! This suet cake recipe is very changeable, so if you want to experiment with it or you are missing an ingredient, don't worry! This recipe is also not too unhealthy for your birds if given in moderation.
Remember that treats should only make up around 10% of a chicken's diet, and this cake is only meant to be served for a special event only once or twice a year.
Let's get making!
Ingredients
Here are the ingredients for this recipe, but as I said before, if you're missing something (unless it's the suet!) the recipe should still work! Also, the amounts can be changed too, this is just a guideline to make a few cakes!
- 2 cups of any flavour of suet
- ½ cup black oil sunflower seeds
- 2 cups regular chicken feed
- ¼ cup raisins or dry fruit cut up
- ½ cup dried grubs (eg. mealworms or shrimp)
- Peanut butter
Equipment
Here's the equipment you'll need to make the cake(s)! I'm sure some things can be replaced (eg. spatula into spoon) if you don't have them.
- A silicon cake mould (any shape will work!)
- A mixing bowl
- A spatula
- A plate or container to serve
Method
Now that we have everything we need, we can make it!
1) Melt the suet until it is liquid
2) Move it to the mixing bowl and add all the ingredients, then stir it
3) Put the mixture into the moulds
4) Put the moulds in the fridge and wait until they harden
5) When they have hardened, remove them from the moulds
6) Spread the peanut butter on top like icing
7) Put them on the plate and serve to your birds
Thanks for reading! See the next page!
- Next page: Send in your photos...
I've only used silicone molds but I'm not a baker so I'd assume it's the same as what you'd do for cookies.