I’m so excited to share these cinnamon Christmas ornaments as the next post in my Christmas activities for kids series. Christmas just brings out the crafty side in me, and making cinnamon ornaments is one Christmas craft I have wanted to do for a long time. In fact, we tried to make cinnamon Christmas ornaments last year, but it didn’t work out. This year, however, I did some more research because I was determined to get them right this time!
The best part about these ornaments is that they make the house smell delicious! Plus, all of the ingredients are edible so this is a safe craft to do with kids who still put things in their mouth. (Although frankly the dough doesn’t taste very good so I’m doubtful there are many kids who would want to eat much of it!)
Cinnamon Christmas ornaments ingredients
The recipe for cinnamon Christmas ornaments is very simple, as it requires just two ingredients:
- 1 part cinnamon (+ a little extra to “flour” your table and hands when you roll it out)
- 1 part apple sauce
Cinnamon Christmas ornaments directions
We mixed together 2 cups of cinnamon and 2 cups of apple sauce. This made about 11 ornaments. You can make more or less dough depending on how many ornaments you want to make.
To save money, I recommend buying your cinnamon at a bulk store like Costco or at the dollar store. You may be able to get your apple sauce at either of those places as well.
Mix the cinnamon and apple sauce together. As you can see, our dough remained a bit crumbly.
We spent some time forming the dough into balls to make it less crumbly.
We sprinkled cinnamon on the table and rolling pin to prevent the dough from sticking when we rolled it out. However, we found that the dough cracked a lot when we used the rolling pin. We actually had better luck flattening it by using our hands.
Because the dough was crumbly, we opted to roll it out pretty thick – about 1/2″ or so. Then we used our Christmas cookie cutters to cut out some shapes.
We slid all of the shapes onto a baking sheet. I used a chopstick to poke a hole in the top of them so we could later string them up to hang on the Christmas tree.
I baked them in the oven at 200 degrees for 1 hour, then let them dry overnight. They dried hard and firm. And the house smelled delicious for several days after with the scent of apple cinnamon in the air.
Once the ornaments were dry, we threaded string through the holes so we could hang them on our tree. The kids were so proud to see their ornaments decorating our tree. 🙂
More Christmas resources
More Christmas crafts from Gift of Curiosity:
- Q-tip painted Christmas tree
- Craft stick reindeer
- Paper plate reindeer craft
- Christmas tree ribbon craft
- DIY Christmas snow globes
- Sand-filled Christmas ornaments
- Fine motor Christmas craft
- Gingerbread man craft
For more Christmas activities your kids will love, see my Christmas Activities for Kids page and my Christmas Activities for Kids Pinterest board.
Follow Katie @ Gift of Curiosity’s board Christmas Activities for Kids on Pinterest.
Alison says
December 10, 2013 at 7:39 pmThis is awesome! I’ve been looking for something I can do with my 26 month old to give to the family and this is it! Do you think it would still work if we added glitter like you tried in the “poop” incident? Or would it make it fall apart?
Katie says
December 10, 2013 at 8:11 pmI think some glitter would probably work, but I wouldn’t add too much because it is already so crumbly. Or maybe just sprinkle the glitter on top once you’ve cut your ornaments and press the glitter in? I guess you’ll just have to try it and see what works!
Valerie @Glittering Muffins says
December 12, 2013 at 5:32 amAlison & Katie, glitter works, we made them with glitter last year:
To make it hold better and make it more moist we added a little bit of apple sauce (our recipe is a little different in quantity).
We also used them as gift tags 🙂
Katie says
December 12, 2013 at 8:40 amGreat to know about the glitter! Thanks for sharing your experience. I love how your ornaments came out!
Valerie @Glittering Muffins says
December 12, 2013 at 9:43 amThanks! Happy to help 🙂
Alison says
December 19, 2013 at 6:19 pmMade these today! Didn’t get to the glitter (did I mention that in addition to my toddler I have a 7.5 month old? Sometimes my brain forgets to remind me to add glitter!), but that’s okay. My toddler had a blast making them! I did have to use significantly more cinnamon than your recipe though – ours looked like they were going to be reindeer poop, but I dumped in more cinnamon (probably 1/2-1c in addition to the 1c we used with our 1c of apple sauce) and all was well. They’ve baked and are just waiting for the “overnight” to finish. I think our Elf on the Shelf might add the ribbons for us overnight!
Katie says
December 19, 2013 at 6:58 pmThat’s great you got to make them. Funny that yours needed more cinnamon – if anything ours neede more apple sauce! I guess the type of Apple sauce and type of cinnamon makes a difference then. :-).
Angela says
December 11, 2013 at 7:00 amI love the smell of cinnamon and they turned out so cute! Thanks for sharing this at Anything Goes, have a great day! 🙂