How to Make Naturally Coloured Valentine's Day Gummy Dog Treats

Taste the love, furfriends! This post will guide you through Cupid’s kitchen and show you how to make this pretty (and pretty doggone delicious) batch of all-natural Valentine’s Day gummy dog treats. It’s an easy small-batch adaptation on a basic gummy recipe using some of our pawsonal favourite healthy yummy ingredients to create a Valentine-themed colour palette. We’ll also include tips to vary the ingredients to suit your pup (or your pantry), along with some other doggone great Valentine’s Day ideas that you might enjoy.

Pretty for Peeps, Pretty Tasty for Pups

As our longtime furfriends and readers have often heard me say, the pretty part of holiday shapes or colours is most for us humans, so the smell and taste factors should always be your priority when making (or buying) special snacks for your dogs. But, if we can have it both ways, then why not? Fun to make, festive to share, and fab to eat? Pawfect!

We’re making multi-coloured treats in a Valentine palette, but dogs see colour differently than people, and they don’t see pink or red like we do. Humphrey and his friends probably also don’t care about whether their tasty gummies are shaped like love hearts, paws, bones, or blobs. Hahaha… However, they do enjoy the theatre of supervising me in the kitchen. And, of course, they absolutely love their clean-up and taste testing duties, along with any subsequent snacking.

Creating Naturally Coloured Valentine Gummy Treats

Good Things in Small Batches

Gummy dog treat are best enjoyed fresh. They don’t freeze well and have a limited fresh storage life in the refrigerator. But they’re very very very easy to make. We always have some sort of fresh gummy treats in a container in the fridge, and they generally last up to a week, depending on their ingredients. But they might not make it that long here if we have lots of visiting furfriends, hahah! You can read more in our pet chef help post on general info on making and storing homemade gelatin gummy dog treats.

Mixing Things Up

Within a small bath, you can also easily create extra variety. Especially if you’re using dry powders or little amounts of liquid add-ins that won’t upset the balance of your liquid-to-gelatin ratio for a well-set gummy. Our post on making a small batch of multi-coloured or flavoured gummy dog treats takes you through this in detail if you’d like to have a sniff. As a variation on that concept, we’re going into a Valentine’s palette here, using natural ingredients to adjust the colour and opacity of our gelatin base to shades of white, red, and pink.

Base Basics

The base of our go-to gummies is a liquid-to-gelatin ratio of 1 cup liquid to 3 tbsp gelatin powder. The base liquid(s) and any other add-ins will determine the colour and clarity of the finished gummies. If you’re adding tints, the final colour and clarity will depend on the base. A clear colourless base, like water, will tint transparent and bright. A naturally coloured base will mix colours if tinted, just like blending together paints. And if that base is translucent or opaque, those qualities will carry through and affect the the colour and clarity. Any chunky or insoluble bits in your ingredient combo will also affect the finished appearance, depending on whether they sink (most visible on the top of a set moulded shape), float (layered on the back), or suspend (speckled throughout).

Palette Planning

For Valentine’s Day, we’re ging for a palette of white, red, and pink. I included bone broth in the pictured treats, as dropping a couple of cubes of frozen doggy bone broth to top up a water and gelatin base has become one of our quick, tasty, healthy, furfamily favourites for making simple gummies. It’s healthy and yummy, but bone broth is coloured and I don’t strain it for clarity, so it adds a brownish tinge and settling speckles to my gummy mixture in the Valentine treats pictured in this post. I’m ok with that, and the dogs are very ok with that!

But you could easily skip it, and use a similar methodology with water and goat milk or yogurt top create for a brighter red, whiter white, and subsequent pinker pinks. Want to see some alternative Valentine gummy mixtures? Check out our goat milk gummies or yogurt gummies for whiter whites, and our beetroot gummy hearts or naturally hot pink Valentine gummies for some vivid colour examples.

Small-Batch Naturally Coloured Valentine Gummy Dog Treats

Ready to get started? As detailed above, to create the gummy base, I typically work with a ratio of one cup of liquid to 3 tbsp of gelatin powder. Those quantities are easily scaled to suit a different mould volumes. I usually make a single gummy flavour or recipe, but we’re mixing things up here for a Valentine’s Day variety batch.

Treat Ingredients:

1 cup cool clear or pale dog-friendly liquid (see notes above, tips below)
3 tbsp quality powdered gelatin
Add-in ingredients and/or tints

We’re using goat milk to create white, beetroot powder to create red, and combining both to create different intensities of pink. Alternatively, small quantity of yogurt or kefir would easily substitute for the goat milk. Beetroot is my favourite for pinks and reds, but Humphrey suggests perhaps strawberries (he like picking his own!) if you’re looking for a different option for a reddish pink. Check out our post on natural food colourings for dog treats for tinting tips and other colourful ideas.

Preparing the Gelatin Base:

Measure the liquid into a small pan.
Sprinkle the surface with gelatin powder.
Wait and let sit for approximately five minutes or longer for the gelatin powder to bloom / gel. Note: When adding cubes of frozen bone broth, I estimate the additional amount of liquid they’ll add to my mixture and adjust the water down or gelatin up to keep the ratio.
Gently stir the mixture over low heat until the gelatin is completely dissolved. Take care not to shortcut with high temperatures or overheat. Heat can reduce the setting strength of gelatin.
Remove from heat.

Splitting and Combining the Gelatin Base with Add-Ins:

If you are using heat-sensitive ingredients or want to preserve special qualities, like in yogurt or raw goat milk, you’ll want to let you gelatin base cool down a little before you get on to mixing and pouring.

Measure your add-ins to individual small suitable containers for mixing. I’m using stainless coffee milk jugs – they’re great for mixing, pouring, and dishwasher-friendly for easy clean-up.
When mixing gelatin with powders, I like to start with a very small quality of liquid, create a slurry, and then incrementally add more liquid. Mix a small spoonful of the prepared liquefied gelatin with the powder in each of the divided containers to dissolve/mix with minimal lumps and clumps. Once the starter is mixed, you can add in their portion of the remaining prepared gelatin base and stir to thoroughly combine. If you’re making different colour strengths, you can reserve some of your base to blend and adjust incrementally.

Our mixes start with beetroot (red) and goat milk powder (white) on their own. Then we combine some of the beetroot mixture with the goat milk (light pink) and then more (darker pink). You can also use extra powder to boost or whiten if the colour isn’t working out quite like you had in mind…again, the dogs will not care at all if things aren’t picture pawfect, though.

Shaping and Setting the Gummies:

Spoon or pour the gelatin mixtures into separate moulds. Small silicon food moulds (affiliate link) are great for making gummies, and they’re also a fun way to shape treats for special holidays, like the Valentine hearts pictured here along with our paws and bones. No moulds? Gelatin gummies can also be poured into larger containers, set, and cut into treat-sized portions.
Chill to set fully before removing from the moulds (or cutting).
Store in the fridge and enjoy while still fresh. See additional tips and tricks below.

Gummy Dog Treat Making Tips and Tricks

See our comprehensive post on making and storing homemade gelatin gummy dog treats for additional information.
Gummy treats should be kept refrigerated and can be frozen for longer storage, although freezing can affect consistency.
Milky treats may have a shorter life than some other ingredient types. This isn’t an issue when we’re making small batches for Humphrey and his many furfriends, but you could easily make a smaller batch by dividing the recipe. Or freeze as above.

Recipe and Ingredient Tips and Tricks

As noted in the post above, in my experience, 3 tbsp of gelatin powder per cup of liquid makes lovely firm gummies. If you prefer, you can use more gelatin for added supplementation or less for a jigglier jelly treat. Individual gelatin powders may also be a little stronger / weaker. Find a ratio that works for your preferences and, of course, your dog.
Love the look but not into goat milk? As noted in the post, you can use an alterntive ingredient, like yogurt or kefir as shown in our yogurt gummy hearts. Or you can pass on the whites and pinks, and go all in on ravishing red using beetroot or another tint.
For more tinting tips or alternative colour ideas, check out our post on using natural colourings for dog treats.
Not into gummies? Ingredients MIA for a last minute batch? Don’t worry! There are many different types of treat ideas in our archives. Our post on DIY ideas for Valentine’s Day dog treats might be a good place for you to start sniffing. You can also explore our Valentine’s Day archives or dig around on our Pinterest for ideas from all over the puppernet.

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 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.