Hungry for gold? Yes, indeed! Here’s how to make gold medal dog treats. Or gold medal cookies for people, if you’d prefer making some treats for non-furry family and friends. Continuing our Olympic-inspired fun from our DIY medal dog tug toys, this DIY dog treat post shows you how to create edible gold medal dog treats using basic items that you probably already have on hand in the kitchen. No special tools or stamps required. Pawfect! Here’s how to make your own cute, simple, and fun DIY medal-shaped treats for top dogs.
Going for Gold!
Choosing a Dough Recipe
Any rolling dog treat dough (or cookie dough for the peeps) works for this DIY medal making method. You’ll get better impressions on a smooth cohesive dough that can take an impression cleanly. See our post on decorating homemade dog treats for more information and helpful tips. For gold medals, consider a recipe that uses something like turmeric, peanut butter, pumpkin, kumara, molasses, or other a natural golden ingredients for colour. You can read more about tinting treats in our post on using natural food colourings for dog treats.
The pictured treats were made using peanut butter and ground flax in a rice flour dough recipe. That recipe isn’t on the blog (it was a recipe development test/trial) but we do have lots of other peanut butter dog treat recipes in the archives, including different roll-and-cut doughs.
Making the Gold Medal Dog Treats
Making the Treats:
Preparing and cutting the dough:
- Preheat the oven and mix the dough according to your chosen recipe.
- Rest the dough, if/as needed for your chosen recipe, before rolling and cutting.
- Roll the dough, then cut to shape and place on a prepared baking sheet.
- To keep things on the smaller size, I use a small round biscuit cutter to cut each medal. Everyday objects, such as drinking glasses, make handy substitutes for circles if you don’t have a suitable cutter. These are just about a prefect size for cookies, but on the large side for dog treats; however, they can easily be broken into pieces for serving as smaller snacks or for sharing between champions.
- Optional: To cut a ribbon hole in the medals, I used a mini circle plunger cutter (affiliate link for examples). These are inexpensive and one of my new favourite training treat tools; however, anything small, clean, and round will do. The hole can also be created by pressing through with a small point instead of cuttinga hole. Or leave it out for solid medal treats/cookies without any ribbons. Easy as!
Creating the design on the gold medal treats:
- A curved line was pressed into the edges using the back (blunt) edge of a butter knife to form the stems for the laurel leaves. Small indentations were added for leaves using tip of a teaspoon handle.
- The “1” was pressed into the middle by again using the butter knife. If you have small number cookie cutters, these are great as well. I own some now, as seen in the decorations on Oli’s 12th birthday cake, but didn’t at the time the pictured medals were made.
Finishing and baking the treats:
- Chill, if/as needed for your chosen recipe, and then bake according your chosen recipe.
- Cool before serving and storage.
Safety first, furfriends! Although I photographed my ever obliging (and very obedient) taste tester and pro poser, Oli, receiving and nipping his well-deserved gold medal from the ribbon used to stage the photos for this post, the ribbons were just for photos with careful posing. I strongly recommend presenting the gold medal treats without ribbons to your medalist dogs for safety. And for good manners. Hehe. For human cookies, use your discretion based upon the age of your champions and other case-by-case safety considerations.
Training and Treats
Don’t forget that dog-lympians need plenty of fun, play, exercise, and training as part of their quest for the podium. Be a bit silly and get fitter whilst having fun together. Then celebrate your achievements with a well-earned treat or two. Woofs!
Want to make some new toys for Olympic-sized fun? We have lots of DIY dog toy ideas in the archives, including a special set of gold, silver, and bronze medal tug toys. And you can sniff around our DIY dog wear posts for projects that you can adapt to your national colours, favourite sports, teams, and more. Dog bandanas are easy crafts, with options for both sewn or no-sew DIYs. And your can add iron-ons, fabric paint, and other embellishments to homemade or ready-made bandanas for special custom designs and decorations, too.
Treat Making Tips and Tricks
Need a helping paw in the kitchen? A little bit of coaching to find your way to medal status? Check out our pet chef help section for handy reference and support posts, including our intro to baking biscuit-style dog treats and decorating baked biscuits.
One of the best things about baking for dogs is that they’re not harsh judges on points for your artistic style. Scent and taste are the winning techniques for scoring big points on the dog treat board. Pick a recipe with some of their favourites and you’ll be off to a head start for treat success. And even if things don’t come out looking quite like you’d hoped or planned, you’ll always be a champion in their books. Woofs!
Hungry for more tasty treats? There are all sorts of homemade dog treat ideas in our blog archives. You can use the category and tag labels to find recipes and ideas that might be of interest, or use our internal search tools to sniff out 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.
