Prickly Pizzas

Prickly Pizzas

       I grew up with this pizza recipe, it is the most delicious one I have tried.  Tonight I will attempt to make it look like a hedgehog!  Whether or not I succeed is unimportant, it will be tasty.

First I had Merlin, our snowflake male, check out the ingredients for me.  He says they're okay.

    

My cooking always turns out better 

with a hedgie in my apron pocket

Ingredients

2 1/2 - 3 cups of flour

1 package active dry yeast

1/2 tsp salt

1 cup warm water (not hot!)

2 Tbsp cooking oil

Directions

1) in a large mixing bowl combine 1 1/4 cups of the flour, the yeast, and the salt.

2) add warm water and oil.  Stir rapidly for 3 minutes

3) stir as much of the remaining flour as you can

*less flour will lead to a softer dough

4) turn dough out onto a lightly floured surface.  Knead for 6 minutes

5) divide dough in half, cover, let rest for 10 minutes

6) grease two 12-inch pizza pans.  Roll each dough half into 11-inch circles.  transfer dough circles into prepared pans
7) cover and let rise in a warm place until nearly double (30 minutes).  Meanwhile preheat oven to 375 degrees.
8) cook the crust for 8 minutes or until light brown



 9) Spread pizza sauce (I use spaghetti marinara sauce) onto the hot crusts and top with desired toppings.
10) bake about 10 minutes or until cheese is toasted lightly



Merlin served as my model










It looks vaguely hedgehog-like...

But we ate it too fast to notice!

 

Nobody Likes New Mexico

So you know how we began, we brought home a beautiful salt and pepper pinto girl from the pet store. The next step was slightly more difficult than driving the couple of miles between our house and Clarks Pet Emporium. 

Genetics. All of your breeders out there, and a lot of other people, know that you do not want to mate siblings or first cousins, the further each others family trees are from each other the better. Unfortunately our first hedgehog came from a pet store. We saw her there, held her, and decided that she would be ours. If you intend to breed hedgehogs, this isn't the best method, but we worked with what we had, which was no idea of her genetic history. If you buy a hedgehog with the intent of breeding them, buy from a breeder who can give you the pedigrees of the parents. That way you can be certain that you aren't potentially inbreeding hedgehogs.

Merlin in Meghan's Lap last week

We knew Sushi was a New Mexico hedgehog and we couldn't get another pet store hedgehog without risking them being related. We researched breeders outside of New Mexico. What we found was that there were no breeders in New Mexico at least no one online. There have to be some other breeders in green chili country or where do all of these pet store hedgehogs come from? Colorado seemed our best bet as there were at that time three or so breeders, we looked at them all and finally chose First Harmony Farms. They were lovely people who let us look at their breeding room and gave us some ideas for our own. They also let us meet his parents, and of all the hedgehogs I have met, his father Caesar is still the mellowest hedgehog I've held.

We brought home Merlin, a chocolate chip snowflake. He was so tiny compared to our then five month old female. He's still small when compared to Sushi but back then there was no way he would mate her. We fed him up for three months and finally bred them. Five weeks later Sushi gave birth to a beautiful litter of three.

Sushi and her current litter

I don't think anything can really compare to your first litter. You've never seen anything so tiny and it's spiky and round. My partner Meghan has a theory about waist to hip ratio and cuteness basically meaning that round things are freaking adorable, and she's right. I don't have any human babies yet, but I imagine it might feel similar to this. You got to see life created. First there were two hedgies and then there were five, and I was a part of that. Very exciting stuff.

We went into that litter intending to only breed once. We were going to have that experience with helping create life, raising tiny creatures, and sending them on their way. After doing it we decided that we would indeed only breed twice. After that second litter we actually found another home for Merlin. He didn't like it there and always bit his owner, and was kind of aggressive with us when he came back, but when we bred him again he went back to being his usual sweet self. Merlin apparently needs a regular diet of sex with his cat food.

Their first time together!

Since then we have gotten two more females and another male and are currently in the process of getting USDA certified so that we can expand even more. You see we are still the only breeder in New Mexico online and you guys deserve to have a licensed breeder and lots more hedgehogs.

Apple Hedgebiscuits

Apple Hedgebiscuits

            I am well known as a tea fanatic, so for my first recipe I thought I'd have a hedgehog tea party and make some sort of tea food. While perusing the grocery aisles, I found some lovely ambrosia apples and decided to make biscuit-topped apples.  Hedgehogs also love a good apple mash, so I'll give some apples out to the herd as well.

Preheat oven to 400 degrees

Filling:

2 large apples (3 1/2 cups)

3 Tbs sugar
1 Tbs cinnamon
2 Tbs flour
4 Tbs butter (split into 8 pieces)

-peel & core apples. 

-Dice the apples and toss them with the dry ingredients

-spoon the spiced apples into the ramekins (8)

-top with butter

Topping:

3 cups flour

1 Tbs baking powder

1 Tbs sugar

1 tsp salt

¾ tsp cream of tartar

3/4 cup butter

1 cup milk

16 dried blueberries

Cinnamon

                                                        

combine dry ingredients

cut in the butter

stir in enough milk to moisten the dough

spread flour on the counter, flatten out the dough

cut 8 circles out of the dough. Shape them into tear drop shapes.  Press 2 dried blueberry eyes into each at the pointy end. Cut triangles into the round end for 'spikes'.  Add dough paws & ears if desired

sprinkle cinnamon on round ends of hedgebiscuits.

cook 11 minutes (or until slightly browned)

It makes a delicious breakfast!  

Drizzle with honey, or spread with butter or jam.

 Our kitty, Loki, loves to watch hedgehogs.  He is perplexed as to why they are in teacups.

Origin Story

Sushi, our first hedgehog

         I have always wanted a hedgehog; having read about them in the Redwall Abbey series by Brian Jaques and researched them online.  When I found my first female hedgehog in a Clarks pet store in New Mexico I was ecstatic.  I brought her home and consumed literature on the raising of hedgehogs.

Our first litter

        I read a lot about the hedgehog breeding process and decided to try it.  Being a Biology major, I have taken many genetics courses and had become fascinated with color varieties and the various intrigues of animal husbandry.  I asked my roommate Jasmine to join me on my venture and Desert Hedgehogs was born.  We were never more careful and paranoid than with that first litter.  We had both read horror stories about mothers rejecting their babies and the bloodbaths that could result, so we kept the house as quiet as possible.  When the babies were older we handled them like eggshells, cooing over their adorable roundness.

        Now that we had the babies, we had no idea what to do with them.  Of course we wanted the most perfect homes the world had to offer, but where to find them?  We decided to advertise first in the local school's newspaper.  Our results were flabbergasting, we got many more replies than we had babies.  The new hedgie parents we met with were wonderful and caring, just what we were looking for.

        After we got a few litters under our belt and began feeling like we may actually have some knowledge, I set up the Desert Hedgehogs website:
DesertHedgehogs.weebly.com
I wanted to have a place where we could post pictures of our hedgehogs and our babies, as well as information for new owners.  After getting registered on several hedgehog breeder websites we no longer needed to advertise in newspapers.  The success of our website has been wonderful and exciting and continues to grow every day.  Going from just one sweet little hedgehog to a potential business has been a rapid change with a steep learning curve.  We want to thank the online community and the hedgehog breeders we've encountered for making it possible.  And of course all of our hedgie parents, thank you for loving our babies!