Earlier this year, I had a great time dreaming up ideas for a Pet-friendly TAILgate Party for Petco filled with everything from pet-inspired activities to take-home doggy bags! And now that the NFL season is officially in full swing, we thought it would be fun to come up with even more fun ways to celebrate game day with our 4-legged friends… but tailored specifically to FOOTBALL this time. ;)

So, first up are these cute and easy, Game Day Peanut Butter Dog Biscuits. They retain the traditional “dog bone” biscuit shape, but become reminiscent of little footballs with a quick decorating trick. (I also made sure that the peanut butter I used did not contain Xylitol, to be extra safe.) In addition to serving as fun game day treats for your own pet, these would also make for a super thoughtful gift for your fellow pet-AND-football-loving friends!

I used this Peanut Butter Dog Biscuits Recipe from Petco for the base, then piped “football laces” onto each treat using a simple cream cheese based icing, which I’ll further explain below. Here’s a closer look at the process of creating them…

MAKING THE BISCUITS

Once you’ve mixed up your biscuit ingredients from the recipe to create the dough, here’s what happens next:

1. Prep the dough.

You’ll start by working with about 1/2 of the dough at a time. Stretch and pat it out on a super well-floured sheet of wax paper or other worktop surface of your choice. I seriously cannot stress WELL-FLOURED surface and hands enough here, guys…. this dough is definitely on the sticky side! (I used more of the whole wheat flour called for in the recipe.)

2. Roll it out.

Once the dough is pretty well stretched, use a floured rolling pin to get it nice and flat – and around 1/4″ to 1/2″ thick.

3. Cookie Cutter Time

Now it ‘s time to cut the biscuits out! I used a 3.5″ cookie cutter shaped like a dog bone… for obvious reasons. ;)

Side note: I rolled the 1st half of my dough out on floured wax paper like the original recipe called for, and the 2nd half out directly on my (also floured) granite counter top. I found it a little easier to peel the shaped dough off of the granite, but either method works well as long as there’s plenty of flour. You could also use a large cutting board as your surface.

4. Time to bake!

Place the biscuits on ungreased cookie sheets, and place them in a pre-heated 400º oven for 20 minutes, then turn the oven OFF and leave the treats in the oven for another hour. It’s helpful to set another time for the last part so that you don’t get distracted by another project and forget about them.

Here’s what they look like right outta the oven:

5. The icing on the treat.

Now you could just give the biscuits to your pet like this, but since we’re talking game day here, I thought they needed something a little more fun (yet still EASY!) like football inspired icing “laces”.

I searched high and low for a great dog icing that hardened up like a royal icing, but all of those seemed to just call for cornstarch and water, which was surprisingly difficult to work with (I did actually try it) and also didn’t sound very tasty at all. So I opted for a simple cream cheese based icing that seemed to be another popular option from ’round the web. Here’s the variation I went with:

Ingredients:

• 8 oz reduced fat or non-fat cream cheese
• 2 tbsp honey
• 1 tsp vanilla extract

Instructions:
Combine all ingredients together using a hand mixer. Yep – simple as that! ;)

Use a pastry bag or plastic sandwich bag with the corner snipped off to ice the treats. I found that the faster I worked in regards to piping on the laces, the better they looked. (A slower hand can result in a more wobbly looking line.)

Extra Tips:

1. You’ll probably have some leftover icing. Since the ingredients are cream cheese, honey, and vanilla… save the leftover icing for a human treat! Hint: pairs well with fresh fruit or graham crackers.
2. If you don’t need the full batch of treats right away (the recipe makes A LOT), just ice a portion of them and save the extra icing (in the bag) in the fridge so that it’s ready when you need it.

P.S. For more creative game day ideas with your pet, check out the Pet-Friendly TAILgate that I designed for Petco earlier this year… complete with an extensive set of Free Printables!

Disclosure: This is a sponsored post created in collaboration with Petco. As always, all designs, opinions, and ideas are my own. Thank you for supporting the companies that make it possible for me to keep the creative content coming your way!