Cinnamon Dough Ornaments Recipe
Make applesauce & cinnamon dough ornaments for your Christmas tree with this easy recipe. Plus, download free templates to make heart, star, dove, and tree-shaped ornaments
Cinnamon dough ornaments are a wonderful way to decorate a tree and they make lovely gifts. With only applesauce and cinnamon as ingredients, they also smell delicious ... but don't eat them! They're for decoration only. In fact, they'll last for years.
Click here to download my free ornament templates (pdf format)
We've also added even more heart, star, and Christmas tree templates in different shapes and sizes.
Cinnamon Ornament Dough Ingredients
This is the cinnamon ornament recipe that's worked best for me:
- 1 cup applesauce
- 1 ¾ (one and three-quarter) cups powdered/ground cinnamon
This is enough to make about 15 ornaments of the size shown on this page.
Other recipes suggest equal amounts of applesauce and cinnamon, but when I tried that the dough turned out way too runny, and I had to keep adding more and more cinnamon until I got the right texture.
Cinnamon Dough Ornaments Instructions
Step 1 - Knead
Mix the cinnamon and applesauce together in a large bowl, and knead into a dough with your hands. Your Christmas ornament dough should feel like warm plasticine. If it's too runny, add more cinnamon. If it's too dry, add more applesauce.
Step 2 - Roll
Sprinkle a bit of cinnamon onto your benchtop and rolling pin to make them "non-stick", then roll out the dough into a sheet about ¼" (0.5 cm) thick.
Step 3 - Cut
Cut out shapes from the dough with cookie cutters...
...or download my free pdf templates and trace around them with a knife:
Punch a hole near the top of the ornament using a straw or a rolled-up piece of paper:
Repeat for the rest of your ornaments. Keep re-rolling any leftover dough and making more ornaments until it's all used up. You'll be surprised how many you can make from just one batch of dough!
Step 4 - Dry
Fast method: Put the ornaments on a cookie tray lined with baking paper, and bake them in the oven at 200°F (90°C) for 2 hours, flipping once.
No-bake method: Lay your ornaments out on some kitchen towel to dry. Keep them in a warm room, and turn them over every few hours to stop them warping too much. (They always warp a little bit but it doesn't matter.) I put mine near the radiator and they dried completely within 24 hours.
Once they're dry, the ornaments are surprisingly strong. With only applesauce as binder you'd think they'd be brittle, but they're actually pretty tough, and I've never broken one by accident.
Step 5 - Decorate (optional)
If you like, you can sparkle up your ornaments with glitter. I used some glitter pens I got from a discount store.
Finished!
Your finished ornaments should last for years provided you store them in a dry place. Cinnamon has strong anti-bacterial and anti-fungal properties so it shouldn't go off. I've had my ornaments for two years so far and they still smell nice and haven't gone moldy or anything like that.
How did your cinnamon dough ornaments turn out? I hope you found these instructions helpful! If you have any questions or comments, or just want to say hi, please contact me with this handy form .
What Next?
Check my other homemade ornament tutorials here.
And here are some more Christmas pages you might enjoy too.
