Tricks? Treats? Perhaps both??? We’re making homemade peanut butter and pumpkin dog treats. Yum! Doggone delicious flavours anytime of the year, but pawfect for Thanksgiving or Halloween, too. We also have two fabulously fun seasonal ideas for decorating the treats. Here’s our peanut butter pumpkin dog treat recipe and DIY details for trick or treat bones and cute pumpkin shaped dog treats.
Pumpkin Everything!
Pumpkin for People and Pups
Mmm…. Pumpkin! It’s harvest time for our northern furfriends and the silly season of all things pumpkin (and pumpkin spice), but here in New Zealand we like to enjoy pumpkin all year round. Pumpkin is delicious and nutritious, both for people and dogs. Pumpkin is a high-fibre food that can help with weight management and healthy digestion, including soothing both diarrhoea and constipation, but too much can throw the system out of balance and have the opposite effect. It’s also very high in certain vitamins. Too much of anything is never a good thing. Moderation is always important. And extras like treats or toppers should always be a small addition to a complete and balanced diet.
Prepping Pumpkin for Homemade Dog Treats
Unlike many of the dog-friendly fruits and veggies my foraging beasts nibble in our garden, pumpkin should be cooked. I like to roast entire pumpkins and freeze the cooked pumpkin for future use (both for us and for the dogs). It’s easy and efficient, and it’s economical, too. Alternatively, if you’re cooking for a meal, you can make extra to set some aside or save the leftovers for treats, as long as they’re unseasoned. See our post on prepping fruits and vegetables for dog food and treats for more info, ideas, and tricks.
Fun with Stamped and Shaped Dog Treats
These peanut butter pumpkin dog treats were baked when we were preparing Halloween posts. Although they were made and enjoyed long before Halloween, as is the life of a blog dog! When making the treats, I decided to have a little fun with my alphabet cookie stamps (affiliate link). Totally optional, of course! Although I mixed this dough with stamped Halloween dog treats in mind, it was such a lovely natural orange colour that I decided to split my batch and make a few special pumpkin shaped dog treats with it as well. I’ve shared more info on those DIY decorating methods below. As for trick vs. treat selection, taste testers Oli and Humphrey vote for nibbling all of the above.
Peanut Butter and Pumpkin Dog Treat Recipe
Homemade Pumpkin Peanut Butter Dog Treats
Cutting shaped dog treats is optional. Not all treat doughs work well for rolling and cutting, but any roll and cut dough can be used to make hand formed treats (ball and flatten) or many of our other dog treat shortcuts. Prepared dog treat dough can be pressed into a pan and cut to size, formed as treat bars, and more. See our simple shortcuts for making baked dog treats for ideas and examples. Details on how the trick-or-treat bones and pumpkins were prepped for baking are all included in the post below.
Treat Ingredients:
- 1 egg
- 1/2 cup cooked cooled pumpkin, mashed or pureed
- 1/4 cup smooth peanut butter
- 1/4 cup low-sodium stock or other dog-friendly liquid
- Optional: 1 tbsp gelatin powder
- Optional: 1-2 tbsp trim milk powder
- Optional: Turmeric powder to enhance colour (not used in the pictured treats)
- Approximately 1 + 1/2 cups of brown rice flour, plus extra for rolling
Pumpkin gives these dog treats a nice natural light orange tint. If you want a stronger colour, you can amp it up with a dog-safe colouring or by adding some other naturally tinted dog treat ingredients, like turmeric powder, for a boost.
Making the Treats:
Depending on the type of pumpkin and how it’s prepared (roasting, baking, boiling, microwaving, etc.), cooked pumpkin can vary in texture and moisture. It’s important to work incrementally when mixing and adjust quantities if/as needed to suit the desired dough consistency.
- Preheat your oven to 180C (or local equivalent) and gather together your baking ingredients and materials.
- Combine the egg, pumpkin, peanut butter, stock, and any optional ingredients 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 but recommended). Lightly knead the rested dough before rolling.
- Roll, cut into desired shapes, and place on a prepared baking pan. See below for decorating options and ideas.
- Bake for approximately 10-15 minutes. Cooking time will vary with shape/size, so keep an eye on the oven.
- Cool before serving and storage.
Baked treats can be broken for smaller dogs, or made bigger/smaller. Keep an eye on your time and temperature. The smaller the treat, the shorter the baking time. For a crunchier treat, you can let baked treats sit in the cooling oven or pop the baked treats into a dehydrator.
Homemade Trick-or-Treat Bone Halloween Dog Treats
Our stamped trick or treat bones were made using a bone shaped cookie cutter and custom alphabet cookie stamps. They’re inexpensive but versatile for making all sorts of different words. Alphabet stamps come in all sorts of different sizes, and for stamping words on dog treats, you’ll want a small set. 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.
With this style of stamp, remember that your letters must be positioned in reverse order as well as backwards individually. If you are stamping different words, stamping all of each word before switching saves effort swapping letters around. See our stamped peanut butter bone dog treats for more details on our alphabet stamps and using them for treats.
Homemade Halloween or Thanksgiving Pumpkin Dog Treats
Pumpkin Pumpkins
These pumpkins were made with the same peanut butter and pumpkin dog treat dough as the stamped treats above. Many years ago, one of the very first shaped treats we shared on the blog were simple pumpkin dog treats shaped like little pumpkins. These treats were made in the same hand-formed style, but are a much prettier version. The pumpkins were cute and stamped from our roll-and-cut peanut butter and pumpkin treat dough, then decorated with hand-shaped stems and leaves. They look fancy, but were actually a snap to decorate (and could be even faster, if you opted for simplified stems). Here’s a step-by step look at how the pumpkin dog treats were made.
Making Our Pumpkin Shaped Peanut Butter and Pumpkin Dog Treats
The main pumpkin shapes were created by rolling the orange dough, cutting with a basic round biscuit cutter, and adding line indentations with the side of a spoon. I was in a decorating mood, so I hand formed stems (texture was added after placement by gently using a butter knife to make impressions), leaves, and little rolled sections of vine. They look fancy, but it was actually very easy and fun.
For the stems and leaves, a small amount of the divided dough was separated and tinted green with spirulina powder. It’s not a perfect green tint (spirulina doughs often dull when baked), but it is a healthy natural treat tinting option. And the dogs don’t care about shapes and colours anyways, just us crazy humans! See our post on using colourful ingredients to tint homemade dog treats for more ideas.
Additional Treat Making Tips and Tricks
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 (variety is the spice of life!). You can multiply our recipes if you’d like to bake a bigger batch 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
- 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.
- When using ingredients like peanut butter, take care to avoid artificial sweeteners, especially xylitol, which is extremely dangerous for dogs. Xylitol may also be labelled as sweetener code 967.
- Peanut butter can be tricky to measure perfectly. You can wet your measuring cup or spoon with water or spritz with cooking spray to help measure and release 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. I use no added salt or sugar smooth peanut butter.
- I love giving my dogs gelatin gummies, but gelatin is also a binding add-in which helps enhance dough consistency. That can be handy with gluten free flours in dog treat doughs. Similarly, in addition to richness and nutrition, milk powder helps to enhance dough consistency and I find it also creates a slightly firmer/crisper baked result.
- If you want to substitute a ready-made unseasoned pumpkin puree or a dog-safe pumpkin-based baby food, these are often wetter than home prepared plain pumpkin. Adjusting your recipe to use less stock and/or more dry ingredients may be necessary.
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.
