Cinnamon Dough Ornaments
I guess technically you can eat these ornaments, and they get made in the kitchen, so they pass the ‘food blog’ test I arbitrarily created in my head. If you don’t eat them, which I advise, they can make any space they occupy smell WONDERFUL! For days after making these ornaments with Little B the house smelled of cinnamon, then when the ornaments got put on the Christmas/Solstice tree they still smelled wonderful. One of them hanging in my office gets rid of that officy smell, which is not that bad, but nothing compared to cinnamon spice. There is still time before the holidays are over to add some decorations, so dive in and make a batch. Our first roll out was with dough that was too sticky, so the intended shapes got, well, a bit reshaped when transferring them to the pan. They also cracked a bit when baked. We learned as we went, though, and stiffened the dough up with more cinnamon. The picture shows our mixed results, and you can tell which ones were made with the wet dough compared to the dryer dough. This project appeased my desire to make cut out cookies, didn’t result in sugarbombs sitting around the house begging to be eaten. It was such fun creating glittery ornaments we can enjoy during the holiday season. Stay tuned for a wheat free edible version of cut out cookies, but experiments in that vein continue, and mastery is still pending….
Cinnamon Spice Dough Ornaments
1 ½ – 2 cups ground cinnamon
1 tsp ground clove (optional)
1 cup applesauce
1 Tbsp glitter (optional)
Combine half the ground cinnamon, the ground clove (it will make the dough darker, so decide before adding if you want darker or lighter results), applesauce and glitter. Combine until a dough forms. Add more cinnamon as needed to thicken if it is too sticky. The amount of cinnamon needed varies with altitude and humidity, so keep adding cinnamon until the dough seems crumbly, and you need to knead it for the pieces to stay together. Wet dough will bake brittle and the ornaments will crack, so make sure it is stiff. Roll out the dough and use cookie cutters to shape the ornaments, or cut them out freehand. Use a drinking straw to poke a hole in the ornament, strategically placed, for hanging. Place ornaments on baking sheets covered in parchment paper, or directly on the sheets. Bake ornaments at 200 degrees for two hours, then turn off oven and leave the oven closed until it cools off. Yes, I know you can’t tell if the oven is cooled off unless you open it, but two more hours or overnight should do it. Carefully remove the ornaments from the sheets/paper. Loop string or cord through the hanging holes and decorate something.