In my family, we love making ornaments around the holidays. Especially ornaments that are easy for my young children to make. If you are looking for a fun family Christmas craft, look no further. These rustic Christmas ornaments are easy to make and look and smell amazing. This is a great craft to do as a family, in a class, for a holiday event. They are even perfect for adults to make. They are made with just two ingredients, apple sauce, and ground cinnamon, that’s it. Nothing fancy, but they look amazing and will leave a hint of cinnamon in the air.
We used this recipe to make Christmas ornaments. We made the shapes using cookie cutters. You can also make this recipe and make shapes for any holiday such as Halloween, Thanksgiving, and Valentine’s Day. Just use a cookie cutter that goes along with your holiday.
Today we made Christmas trees, gingerbread houses, stars, leaves, and acorns. Since it is closer to Thanksgiving, we felt that the leaves and acorns would be a nice addition to our Fall décor.
These ornaments leave your home smelling amazing. They leave a nice hint of cinnamon in the air.
Since I have two children and they wanted to make their own batch I used the 3.9oz of the Mott’s Apple Sauce. This way I can give each child their own container of apple sauce. If you are doing this activity in child care, school, or Recreation program I suggest using Mott’s 3.9oz apple sauce. Each child can get their own apple sauce and you can measure out the cinnamon.
This recipe does require baking. We baked our ornaments at 200 degrees for 1.5 hours.
Ingredients
3.9oz container of Mott’s applesauce
About ½ a cup of ground cinnamon, you will need a little extra to dust a piece of parchment paper.
Additional Materials
Bowl
Parchment paper
Spoon
Rolling pin
Cookie-cutter
Pencil
Directions
Preheat oven to 200. Pour the entire 3.9oz of apple sauce into your mixing bowl.
Slowly add in your cinnamon and mix together with a spoon. The consistency should be smooth, slightly wet but not sticky. If the dough becomes too dry it will crumble, if it is sticky you will not be able to roll it out. When we made ours, we used slightly less than ½ a cup of cinnamon.
My children really enjoyed mixing the dough together. I let them do this part on their own. My six-year-old daughter helped my three-year-old son, they didn’t want any help from mommy. They had so much fun making this dough.
Once you have a good consistency, lightly dust a piece of parchment paper with cinnamon then roll out your dough with a rolling pin. You will want to roll the dough out so that it is the same thickness as making cookies about ¼ inch thick.
This is the fun part. Once your dough is rolled out use your cookie cutters to make shapes. You do not have to use cookie cutters. You can always get creative and freehand a design.
Once you have made all your shapes place them on a piece of parchment paper. If you want to make ornaments, use a pencil to poke a hole at the top for hanging.
Bake ornaments at 200 degrees for 1.5 hours and enjoy the rustic look and wonderful smell of your holiday ornaments. The cooked ornaments kept their nice rustic fall color. Once the ornaments come out of the oven, you can decorate them or leave them plain. Tie a ribbon through the hole for hanging.
You can also use these as garland for your home!