Fruity, festive, and doggone delicious Christmas truffle dog treats! It’s looking like Christmas and smelling doggone delish in the dog treat kitchen! The optional coconut coating gives these colourful fruit-based truffle dog treats a holiday snowball look, but they’re also lovely plain. You can mix-and-match this easy truffle dog treat recipe with your pup’s favourite fruits. Pawfect!
Making Homemade Truffle and Bliss Ball Dog Treats
No-bake truffle (bliss ball) dog treats can be made using any combination of dog-friendly ingredients that you like, as long as they set firm. This usually requires using either ingredients that set when chilled and/or ingredients that absorb moisture and firm up with some set time. Coconut oil (set) and coconut flour (absorb) are two of my favourites for making dog-friendly truffles. Unlike many of my truffles, I didn’t include any ground flax in these Christmas truffle dog treats so that the colours shine through without the added speckling of the flax.
Festive Fruity Christmas Truffle Dog Treats
Although our dog-friendly truffle recipes are no-bake, the base ingredients sometimes require prep, like pre-cooking veggies before pureeing. Since our Christmas is in the sizzling summertime, I opted for fruity flavours to keep these truffles completely no-bake. Keeping it cool and simple in the kitchen. You can use any favourite dog-friendly fruits on their own or with tints for a boost of festive colour in this simple recipe. Tweak the quantities to compensate for the different moisture levels. Easy peasy. Note that some fruits will brown a little with air contact.
No-Bake Fruit Snowball Christmas Truffle Dog Treat Recipe
Homemade Fruit Bliss Ball Truffle Dog Treats with (Optional) Coconut Coating
You can adapt and use this recipe with any dog-friendly fruit that your pup enjoys. For the trio of colourful Christmas truffle dog treats shown, I used raspberries for the pinkish red truffles, kiwi with a boost of colouring for the green truffles, and a mix of banana and applesauce for the natural/beige truffles. Each was made separately, noting that flour quantities vary depending on the type of fruit puree and its moisture level.
Treat Ingredients:
- 3/4 cup dog-friendly fruits or berries, pureed or well mashed
- 2 tbsp coconut oil, warmed to liquid
- Optional: Colourings or tints to add or boost colour
- Approximately 1/4 to 1/2 cup coconut flour, depending on the type of fruit (see below)
- Optional: Fine desiccated coconut for rolling (or other coating of your choice)
The amount of flour needed will depend on the moisture of your fruit and your chosen dry ingredients/options. Mix incrementally and if in doubt, I prefer to err on the side of wet. A slightly soft set truffle is better than a crumbly truffle. If you’re using a rolling coating for your treats, you might want to keep the mixture a little on the wet side so that the coating sticks well. Uncoated truffles can be made to suit your personal preferences. Wetter dough may make a softer finished truffle, but is often easier to shape when forming the balls.
Making the Treats:
- Puree the fruit and transfer to a suitable mixing bowl.
- Add the coconut oil and any optional add-ins, tints, or seasonings. Mix to combine.
- Add the coconut flour incrementally, mixing thoroughly, until you’ve reached the desired consistency for shaping. The truffle dough may feel slightly loose and wet/oily when warm, but should hold shape when pressed. Not quite right? You can use a small amount of additional flour, additional oil, or warm water to adjust consistency to a nice sticky dough for shaping/pressing into balls. The finished balls will firm up with set time for moisture to absorb into the dry ingredients and when the coconut oil is chilled.
- Roll into small bite-sized balls.
- Coat (optional) or leave plain.
- Refrigerate until firm.
As with any treat, be mindful of treat size and consumption relative to your pet’s size and any other individual factors. Just like human bliss balls, you can break truffles into smaller pieces for serving and/or safety if your pet tends to gulp treats instead of chew.
Treat Making Tips and Tricks
- Truffle treats can be stored in the fridge short term or frozen for longer storage. See our comprehensive pet chef help post on making and storing chilled dog treats for additional information.
- Dog-friendly fruits or berries can be used fresh or thawed from frozen.
- As noted above, we often include ground flaxseed in truffles, but skipped it here because we didn’t want to distract from the Christmas colours. If you’d like to add some, you can mix in a couple of tablespoons before adding the coconut flour. You’ll use less flour as well.
- Coconut flour is a good option for gluten-free / grain-free pet treats, and is also a fairly healthy flour. It’s high in fibre, high in protein, and low-GI relative to alternatives. Coconut flour is very absorbent, which is key to getting a nice consistency and balance in these treats.
Labelling Homemade Goodies and Gifts from the Kitchen
Disclosure: Discounted Kidecals products were provided for my use on a no-obligation basis. Opinions provided herein are my own and are an honest representation of my user experience.
Along with the durable personalised emergency contact labels that we recently trialled (and love) for carrying emergency contact numbers when dog walking, I bought some cute little labels for homemade goodies. Some of those wash-and-wear labels from Kidecals are pictured throughout this post. You can customise them with full printing or leave some space for individual use, which is great if you want some flexibility. Mine work with fine-point Sharpies for semi-permanent text or with dry erase markers for very temporary text.
I’ve been playing with them for a few months now. The printed labels hold up incredibly well in the dishwasher, but come off no-muss no-fuss when you’d like to remove them. Handy for keeping unsuspecting humans from snacking on tasty looking dog treats…hehe! They’re also a classy way to identify dishes for return from pot-luck gatherings and tons of other uses. If you’d like to try Kidecals for yourself, you can use coupon code summersavings (don’t be too jealous, but it’s summertime down here) to save a tidy 15% on your purchase.
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.
