I wanted to make some homemade Christmas ornaments with my kids this year, and I LOVE cinnamon, so these were kind of a no-brainer.

But… something seemed missing from the traditional cinnamon ornament recipe… OH!  I know:  glitter!!

Yup.  Glitter makes everything better.

I love the smell of these things.  And not all recipes use cloves, but it helps enhance the scent, so I totally used them.

I even used cinnamon applesauce instead of regular applesauce.  Don’t know if it made much difference, but, you know, they’re the same price and all, so why not?

It’s great because you just mix everything together.  Super quick.

Admittedly, they were a tad bit difficult to roll out.  I would suggest that this is a job for an adult and not a young child.  The dough is a bit stiff and you have to be careful not to roll it so quickly or roughly that you end up with too make cracks.

This isn’t like cookie dough where you can smooth it out easily.  If there are big ol’ cracks in your ornaments when you put them in the oven, there will be big ol’ cracks when you take them out.  Cracks that will probably make your ornament snap in half when you pick it up.

You’re only using the oven to dry these and not to bake them, so make sure that when you put them in they look how you’ll want them to look when they come out.

You could actually air dry them….. probably.  But I live in Florida.  Hello, humidity.

We used the oven.

Also be sure to be GENTLE when removing the ornament dough from the cookie cutters.

Let your Little Ones cut out their shapes, but make sure either you or a kid with LOTS of patience slowly pushes the ornament out.  Or it will break before you even get it to the pan.

And – another warning – ovens + these guys = STEAM.

So when you open your oven door to check on the ornaments, please, please, please stand back so that you are not hit with a face full of cinnamon-and-clove-laden steam.  TRUST ME.

You can decorate them before baking them, too.

I only did a couple:  you can see the star that I traced with a dotted pattern I made with a toothpick, and also in a couple of ornaments, I used the end of the wooden skewer to draw my daughters’ initials.

Oh, and don’t forget to make a hole in the ornaments before you bake them.  So you’ll have somewhere to hang the string.

We used “metallic tinsel cord” but you could use kitchen twine or ribbon or a thin hemp cord.

Aren’t they adorable?

They’re even better in person.  The glitter is much more prominent, and the aroma – ah, the cinnamon!

*sigh*

Christmas bliss.  :)

Cinnamon Christmas Ornaments with Glitter

Ingredients:

1 1/4 cup ground cinnamon
1 tablespoon ground cloves
1 tablespoon glitter
1 cup cinnamon applesauce

Preheat your oven to 200°F.

Mix the cinnamon, cloves, and glitter in a bowl. Stir in the applesauce.

Knead gently to make sure everything is incorporated. Sprinkle some extra cinnamon on the counter (like you would flour before rolling out cookie dough) and roll out the cinnamon dough to about 1/2 inch thick.

Cut out desired shapes with cookie cutters and gently transfer ornaments to baking pans lined with parchment paper. Use a wooden skewer to very gently make a hole in the ornaments for hanging.

Gently reroll and knead scraps of dough. Roll out and cut more shapes, being careful there are no large cracks in the dough.

Bake for 2 hours, flip and bake for another hour. Allow to cool on pan.

Thread pieces of twine or ribbon through the holes to hang ornaments.

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And click here to print the PDF version:  Cinnamon Christmas Ornaments with Glitter