How to make DIY stamped dog treats using alphabet stamps. I’m loving this easy and inexpensive method of making cute custom treats. Stamping is such a fun way to decorate treats, and customising the stamps is pawesome. Literally. Hehehe… Plus, we’ll share our peanut butter bacon bone treat recipe for the pictured stamped treats.
Creative Fun with Stamped Dog Treats
Unlike many treats with icings and coatings, stamped treats will pack and travel well. There’s no extra ingredients, no extra prep or set time, and way less muss and fuss, too! Also, since you can use any roll-and-cut dough for stamped treats with no extra toppings, stamping is a great way to make a fancy treat for a dog with allergies or special dietary sensitivities using your favourite safe recipe.
We’ve since shared many stamped treats on the blog, but since this was our first official custom stamping post, we’ve included lots of extra details in the how to below. See our post on decorating homemade dog treats for more information and helpful tips.
Versatile Alphabet Stamps for Custom Lettering
Our New Alphabet Treat Stamps
Santa Paws brought all sorts of interesting little goodies for crafting and baking including a set of DIY alphabet cookie stamps. I have a number of cute cookie stamps and presses in my baking stash, including a set of larger letters, but these mini letters are perfect for using on smaller treats and are just the right size for my favourite bone-shaped cookie cutter.
Alphabet stamps come in all sorts of different sizes and styles. For stamping words on dog treats, you’ll want a small set. Even with these tiny letters, some favourite words (including Humphrey) are a tight squeeze on my bone shapes. Shop around and find a size (and price) that you like. Try specialist baking shops or large online retailers like AliExpress or Amazon. You can check out the alphabet cookie stamps on Amazon (affiliate link) for product examples and ideas.
Adjustable Stamps vs. Fixed Stamps
Although you can get some pretty doggone cool cookie stamps, including customised names, I like the versatility of these stamps. With multiple pets and the inevitability of time, being able to set my own words gives me lots of flexibility for indefinite use and any number of word combinations. It does take a little effort to sort, order, and prep the stamps, but not too much. More on that below.
How to Make DIY Stamped Dog Treats
Choosing a Base Dough
Stamped dog treats can be made using any roll-and-cut dog treat dough. For small stamps and stencils to make the clearest impression (whether on human cookies or doggy treats) and stay clear after baking, you need a smooth roll-and-cut dough with low spread and low rise. See our post on decorating homemade dog treats for more information and helpful tips.
To test my new stamps, I opted for a variation on our smooth roll-and-cut peanut butter dog treat dough including finely chopped bacon. The bacon is a little chunky, so not as neat as plain peanut butter, but doggone delicious! We had leftover cooked bacon on hand and I thought it would be a great opportunity to make some extra yummy treats. These test treats were baked back during the holidays – blog dogs are always ahead of the times. Since you are likely to see these stamps in action at Oli’s upcoming 12 birthday, I wanted to share this intro post first.
Stamping Tools
The impressions can be made using any clean and safe object that you’d like to try as a stamping tool. I’m using custom stamps here, but there are tons of other options. See our collection of stamped and shaped homemade dog treats for other ideas.
Selecting Cookie Cutters and Stamping Combinations
If you are stamping your treats, you will need to make sure that your chose cookie cutter and stamps are a compatible size. For alphabet stamps, like mine, this requires limiting the length of the word(s) as well to make sure they fit. Humphrey is a tight squeeze. Right on the limit for my bones.
Using Alphabet Stamps to Make Custom Dog Treats
My alphabet stamps are very basic (and cheap) but versatile, and I’m happy with their use and outcome. In order to separate the letters for initial use, you will need a pair of sharp utility scissors as the slide-in holder won’t cooperate if you don’t snip the letter base cleanly from the plastic tabs. They can be tricky to clean (washing in a colander is a great way to avoid losing any) and I keep the separated letters and a base in a jar for easy consolidated storage.
Remember that your letters must be positioned in reverse order as well as backwards individually in order for the stamped work to come out correctly. If you are stamping different words, stamping all of each word before switching saves effort swapping letters around.
Peanut Butter Bacon Dog Treat Recipe
This recipe is a simple adaptation on our smooth roll and cut peanut butter dog treat recipe. Stamping is, of course, optional (but fun!). Not in the mood for rolling? Any roll and cut dough can be used to make hand formed treats (ball and flatten), pressed into a pan and cut to size, formed as treat bars, and more. Very versatile. See our simple shortcuts for making baked dog treats for ideas.
Treat Ingredients:
- 1 egg
- 1/4 cup smooth peanut butter
- 1/4 cup room temperature water, stock, or other dog-friendly liquid
- 1/4 cup of very finely chopped bacon (pre-cooked and cooled)
- Approximately 1 cup of brown rice flour, plus extra for rolling
Making the Treats:
- Preheat your oven to 180C (or local equivalent) and gather together your baking ingredients and materials.
- Combine peanut butter, egg, liquid, and bacon in a mixing bowl.
- Incrementally add flour, mixing into a cohesive workable dough. The amount of flour required will vary depending on your individual ingredients and any optional add-ins or substitutions. Missed the mark? No worries! You can add a little bit of extra liquid, a small amount of olive oil, or additional flour to adjust consistency if/as needed.
- Rest dough (optional).
- Roll, cut into desired shapes, and place on a prepared baking pan.
- Stamp (optional) with custom designs or words.
- Bake for approximately 10-15 minutes. Cooking time will vary with shape/size, so keep an eye on the oven. Optional: For a crunchier treat, you can let baked treats sit a while in the cooling oven before removing to get a little crispier or pop the baked treats into a dehydrator.
- Cool before serving and storage.
Baked Biscuit Dog Treat Making Tips and Tricks
- See our introduction to making homemade baked biscuit (cookie) dog treats for additional information on baked dog treats.
- We don’t include yield in our treat recipe posts because it is very dependent on what the maker decides for treat shape, size, and thickness when they’re baking. We like to bake small batch treats though (variety is the spice of life!) and you can multiply our recipes if you’d like to big batch bake for frozen storage or to share with furfriends.
- Homemade baked dog treats are best consumed within a couple of days from baking or frozen for longer storage. See our post on baked dog treat shelf life and storage for information and tips.
Recipe and Ingredient Tips and Tricks
- When using ingredients like peanut butter for dogs, take care when shopping to avoid artificial sweeteners, especially xylitol, which is extremely dangerous for dogs. Xylitol may also be labelled as sweetener code 967. I typically use a no added salt/sugar smooth peanut butter.
- Peanut butter can be tricky to measure perfectly. You can spritz your measuring cup or spoon with cooking spray to help measure with less mess. Or simply don’t stress about it. Close enough is good enough. There can be big differences in consistency of different peanut butters as well.
- Variations in measurements, individual ingredient types, and options and substitutions as well as variations in egg size, ingredient and ambient temperatures, etc. are all part of why we work incrementally when mixing.
Hungry for more tasty treats? There are all sorts of homemade dog treat ideas in our blog archives. You can also use the category and tag labels above/ below this post to find other recipes that might be of interest or use our internal search tools to find something specific. Remember, treats (bought or homemade) are for spoiling your pup in moderation. We share ideas from treats that we’ve made ourselves for our pets, but different animals have different preferences (likes/dislikes), just like people. Some pets may have special dietary requirements and/or food allergies/intolerances. If you are ever in doubt or have questions about what’s suitable for your pet, have a chat with your trusted vet.
