Cinnamon Dough Ornament Recipe For Christmas Trees And Rustic Decor

Cinnamon dough ornaments not only look rustically beautiful when hung on a Christmas tree, they also make fragrant hanging decor year round.

The ornaments can be hung simply on a piece of twine to continue the rustic. You can also thin a piece of ribbon threaded through the hanging hole to add more color to the ornaments so they match the hue scheme of a room when being displayed as a shelf hanger.

Unlike salt dough ornaments, which are lovely as well, making cinnamon dough ornaments will not dry out your hands or sting every miniscule cut you did not even realize you had.

There are only two common household ingredients necessary to make cinnamon dough ornaments, making them a very inexpensive and no-prep project to complete as a last minute gift, wrapped present decoration, or as part of a holiday crafting tradition with children.

I always use any crafting or baking activity the children help with as part of their homeschool science and math lessons.

The measuring of ingredients, following and comprehension of directions, and the transformation of ingredients from a solid to a liquid, liquid to a solid, or soft to hard, is an excellent kitchen science experiment.

Note! These ornaments are not edible!

Print Recipe

Cinnamon Dough Ornaments Recipe

Equipment

• Cookie cutters – old fashioned metal ones work best
• Straw or pencil
• Twine or narrow and thin ribbon
• Small gems, beads, tiny cake decoration jewels, etc. to glue onto the finished baked cinnamon applesauce ornaments for ornamentations – optional
• rolling pin
• Baking sheet
• Wire baking rack

Ingredients

• 1 cup cinnamon
• ¾ cups applesauce
• 2 tablespoons Elmer’s (or similar) glue optional

Instructions

• Preheat the oven to 200 degrees F (93 C).
• Combine the cinnamon and applesauce into a small bowl, and knead together as you would bread dough. It should be about the consistency of sand when you are going to build a castle with it at the beach.
  
• Stir in the glue if using.
• Once you have a dough-like consistency, roll the dough out to about a one fourth of an inch thickness. I recommend doing the dough rolling on top of the ungreased baking sheet you are going to use to avoid ripping the soft dough apart transferring them from the counter or rolling pin mat to the baking sheet.
  
• Use cookie cutters to create the design you desire.
  
• Use a pencil or straw to poke a hole through each ornament where you want the hanging twine or ribbon to go.
  
• Bake for about two and a half hours, or until hard. Do not overbake or the cinnamon dough ornaments will crack.
  
• Place the ornaments on a wire baking rack to cool.
• Allow the ornaments to cool completely and harden before threading twine or ribbon through the hole and hanging.
  

I recommend allowing the cinnamon dough ornaments to cure for three to four days before hanging.

If you want to vary the lovely scent produced by the cinnamon applesauce dough ornaments, toss in a pinch of clove, nutmeg, ginger, allspice, or pumpkin pie spice when making the dough.

Instead of or in addition to using cookie cutters to make the ornaments, you can also press in Christmas tree pine needles snipped from your woods or the live tree in your living room to make a delicate and rustic shelf hanger or ornament.

Simply roll out the dough and press the evergreen tree branches into the dough.

Next, use a Mason jar ring as a cookie cutter to create a round shape around the pressed greenery.

The number of cinnamon dough ornaments this recipe makes varies by size of the cookie cutter used. When using a typical palm sized cookie cutter the ingredient amounts in this recipe should make 11 or 12 ornaments.