Cinnamon Dough Ornaments

I tried my hand at cinnamon dough ornaments last night. They look just like gingerbread and smell delicious!

I used Martha Stewart's recipe found here. It calls for:

1. 1 cup ground cinnamon
2. 1/4 applesauce
3. 1/2 cup of craft glue

First, you measure out and mix the cinnamon and the applesauce (I ended up adding a couple of tablespoons more applesauce to get a consistency I liked). Then you add the craft glue. I didn't want to use up all of any one given glue, so I used a 1/4 cup of tacky glue and a 1/4 of Mod Podge. Martha's instructions say to let the dough sit an hour. I'm impatient and was worried about the glue getting too dry, so I only let my sit 30 minutes or so. Here's what the dough will look like:

After you let it sit a bit, take a small hunk of the dough (about 1/4) and roll it out with your rolling pin. Here's some tips for working with the dough:

1. If it gets dry and starts cracking, sprinkle it with a little tiny bit of water. This helps smooth the dough.
2. Use dry cinnamon like you would flour when rolling out cookies. it keeps the dough from sticking to your rolling pin.
3. Don't be afraid to add a little extra applesauce if the consistency of the dough is too tough. Just make sure it gets mixed in really well.

Once your dough is rolled out, you can use cookie cutters to cut out shapes, or like Martha Stewart, you could print out templates on card stock and use a knife to cut around them. I did both. Don't forget to poke a hole for hanging the ornaments. I used a straw for the bigger ones and a small pastry bag tip for the little ones.

Here's the "cookies" drying on a rack. You are supposed to let them air dry for 24 hours, flipping them over every 6 hours or so. Or you can bake them at 200 degrees for about 2 hours, flipping once about half-way through.

Mine are still drying, so no finished pics yet. I will update this post when I'm able to get them decorated. Martha glittered her bird shapes. I want mine to still look like gingerbread, so I'm planning on using paint pens, puff paint and things like that to decorate them. I plan to put the small ornaments on my little kitchen Christmas tree. I'm so excited to finish these! If you try these, please show us pics!

*Update: I decorating the dried ornaments mostly using fabric puff paint. It worked great! Here's some of my favorite:

Happy Crafting!

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