Simple shortcuts for making baked dog treats in any size you wish. Quick and easy ways to cut and bake homemade dog treats with less muss, less fuss. Almost any roll and cut dog treat dough can be converted into quick treats with these shortcuts, whether as a small batch or in bulk. Easy peasy!
Time for Treats
Fast Treats
Faster Treats
New to dog treat baking? Check out our introduction to making homemade baked biscuit (cookie) style dog treats from the DIY dog treat FAQs, Tips, and Troubleshooting mini-series. Woofs!
Bulk Cutting Small Dog Training Treats for Baking
For all of the shortcuts below, preheat the oven and prepare your treat dough according to your chosen recipe. Most types of roll and cut dog treat dough will work. Some non-rolling doughs may also work, but beware that they may be crumbly or have chunky add ins that may affect cutting and/or cause crumbling in the baked treats.
Rolling and Cutting Homemade Dog Treat Dough into Tiny Treats
In this method, the treat dough is rolled on parchment or a reusable baking mat (take care not to nick you mat when cutting), transferred to a baking pan, and deeply scored. You can do this with a knife, but a rolling pasta or pizza cutter makes this quick and tidy work. Rolling the dough before cutting takes only a tiny bit of effort (minimal mess as it’s just one big roll), but I think it’s worth it for the uniform results. See below for a no-roll alternative.
Once baked, the treats can be cracked or re-cut along the score lines into smaller pieces. If you like to dehydrate your treats after baking and before storage, you can break the large sheet of treats into smaller portions and transfer them to the dehydrator. If making treats this way, I like to keep them in blocks. They are super easy to stack and store (I usually freeze dog treats for storage), and remove as block for small quantity defrosting and use. Pawfact!
No Rolling? No Problem! Pressing and Cutting Dog Treat Dough into Tiny Treats
In this method, we’re ditching all the tools. No rolling pin or cutting wheel, just hands and dough and general kitchen tools. If I’m shortcutting, I’ll roll as above (or ball and flatten), but the end results of the press and cut method are very similar to rolling. Just not quite as uniform.
In a prepared baking dish, break apart the dough and gently pat into big flat pancake. If your pan is larger than your desired thickness for volume of dough, simply pat the outside into a roughly even edge. Use a knife (or pizza cutter, pasta cutter, etc.) to cut lines into the dough to form small pieces. Note how the drag of the knife if pulled through the dough distorts the shape of the pieces compared to the wheel above (or more careful knife work).
Bake the treats, the remove from the oven, cool slightly and break or cut apart. The scoring lines make it easy to break apart the baked treats into even pieces. Treats baked in a big sheet may hold more moisture during baking. You can return the treats to the oven if you’d like to bake the pieces a little more like a doggy biscotti or transfer them to a dehydrator.
Getting Creative with Homemade Dog Treat Cutting
Homemade Dog Treat Bars
Sitting somewhere between the two methods above is one of my favourite shortcuts. If I’m making roll and cut dog treats, when I get to the end of the dough, I’ll often either ball and flatten the last of the dough or form it into a little bar. These look a lot like the broken segments of the rolled and cut treats shown above, just without the cut edges. I’ll shape the last of the dough into a rectangle, transfer the block to my baking sheet, and score it into small blocks.
See our homemade Christmas dog treat bars for details on shaping, as well as an example of using this technique to create super cute little homemade gift bars.
Mini Plunger Cutter Dog Treats
This last tip for quickly cutting small dog treats in bulk is to use a miniature plunger cutter. This requires rolling the dough and individually cutting each treat, but the plunger makes it incredibly fast to cut and transfer tiny treats to the baking pan. Normal cookie cutters can be fiddly, especially tiny ones. The plunger does the work of popping out the treat dough as fast as you can cut it.
You can buy similar cutters from baking supply stores, in the baking and cake decoration section of large craft stores, on from an online retailer. They’re usually inexpensive and may be individual or part of a set (my circles came as a set of different diameter plungers). Shop around for size you like at a good price. Check out the plunger cutters on Amazon (affiliate link) for product examples and ideas.
Spots and Dots
Ok, so we’re clearly fans of little dots (heheh…) but circle treats do have their advantages. There may be a little extra effort involved compared to the straight bulk cuts above, but the tiny dots are more than just cute. I have several different shapes of small plunger cutters, but the simple circles a favourite for pocket-friendly treats. Round treats, like these, are less vulnerable to cracking and crumbs when carried in pocket treat bags or training pouches. They don’t have any sharp corners to catch or crumble. I also have some tiny flower plungers with rounded petals that hold up nicely.
Hungry for more tasty treats? There are all sorts of homemade dog treat ideas in our blog archives. You can also use use the category and tag labels above/ below this post 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.
