Woohoo! We love to create and share posts for special days and furfriends around the globe. These DIY stamped American flag dog treat are a simple way to embellish homemade dog treats for the Fourth of July (and other puptriotic occasions) without using dyes, food colourings, or icing. They are fabulously cute, but also easy to make. This decoration technique can be used for human cookies, too.
Looking for pet-friendly holiday and special occasion ideas? We take requests for future posts, and have created dog-friendly holiday DIYs, recipes, freebies, and more (including for holidays and occasions we don’t celebrate ourselves). We can’t turn every special request into a scheduled post due to planning and other constraints, but will try to help with ideas where we can!
Fun with Stamps
Stamping is one of my favourite ways to decorate homemade dog treats. You can use any roll-and-cut dough and there are no extra toppings or icings to worry about. Stamping is a great way to make a fancy treat for anyone, but it’s especially handy for a dog with allergies or special dietary sensitivities using your favourite safe recipe. Unlike many treats with icings and coatings, stamped treats pack and travel well, too. Stamping is a pawesome way to decorate for goodie bags (check out our free printable red white and blue treat tags and labels), popping in your picnic basket, or holiday road trips. Plus, there’s no toppings to worry about melting in sizzling summer weather. Yay!
Making Stamped American Flag Dog Treats
Choosing a Base Dough
Stamped dog treats can be made using any roll-and-cut dog treat dough. You’ll get better impressions on a smooth cohesive dough that can take an impression cleanly. Avoid using chunky ingredients that will be difficult to stamp. Dough colour variations and speckling may also be a distraction from the stamped pattern. See our post on decorating homemade dog treats for more information and helpful tips.
Stamping Tools
The impressions can be made using any clean and safe object that you’d like to try as a stamping tool. The pictured treats were made using a simple star-shaped cookie cutter (affiliate link) and then hand embellished using a star plunger mini-cutter (affiliate link) and knife. Easy peasy! You can use other cutters for the primary shape instead for a star if you’d like, and a small clean star star-shaped stamp or similar could be substituted for the cutter to create a similar look if you don’t have a plunger cutter and don’t want to buy one.
Making the Stamped Dog Treats (or Cookies):
- Preheat the oven and mix the dough according to your chosen recipe.
- Roll the dough, then cut to shape and place on a prepared baking sheet.
- Carefully press lines into the treats to create the stripes (I used a knife edge). When making the lines, keep the left point of the star plain for the addition of mini stars. Press with a star plunger mini-cutter to create star impressions in the blank area on the left point. Press deep enough to stamp a clear star impression, but not so deep as to cut through or pull-out the dough.
- Chill if needed for your chosen recipe.
- Bake according to your chosen recipe.
- Cool before serving and storage.
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 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.
