by This is a family friendly Christmas craft, and the results are so beautiful you’ll be making them for your tree, and making gift sets for all your friends and family! Yes, they turn out a beautiful, dark glossy brown and there’s no shelf life for these items. We’ve had ours for a good four years now–still lookin’ and smellin’ good!
Aromatic Dough Ornaments (not for eating!)
- 2 ¾ cups all-purpose flour
- ¾ cup salt
- ¼ cup ground cinnamon
- 1 TB ground cloves
- 1TB ground allspice
- ¾ tsp powdered alum
- 1 ¼ cups water
- Combine flour, salt, cinnamon, cloves and alum in a medium mixing bowl. Add water. Mix well to form dough. Shape into a ball. Knead on lightly floured surface for about 5 minutes or till the dough is smooth.(If too stiff, sprinkle with additional water; if too moist add flour) Spray baking sheet with vegetable cooking spray, set aside. Heat oven to 250 degrees F.
- Roll dough to ¼ inch thickness on lightly floured surface, working with small portions of dough at a time. Use cookie cutters to cut out shapes. I think larger cookie cutters are best for these ornaments (eg, 3″x4″ or so). We have Christmas trees, hearts, gingerbread people, and music notes on our tree!
- Embellish cutouts, if desired, with red hots or cloves. We didn’t, I love their simplicity and smooth brownness!
- Use a drinking straw to poke a hole through the top for hanging.
- Place cutouts on prepared baking sheet, and bake for 2 hours till tops are dry and feel firm to the touch. (Your house will smell sooo good!)
- Remove ornaments to a rack and set aside for 24 hours or more to complete drying. For glossier appearance, lightly spray cutouts with vegetable spray.
- Insert ribbon or raffia through straw holes, knot ends together.
Another adorable use for these ornaments is as a window swag. Instead of poking holes through the top of the ornaments, poke them through the sides and string red or natural colored raffia through the holes. My favorite combination is gingerbread men and hearts with the natural colored raffia…hanging across the middle section of your window.
Every Christmas tree needs at least a dozen of these ornaments….don’t you think?
P.S. originally this post had a picture of a dough ornament from my friend Jill, but a few months ago I moved all my blog content from a wordpress free blog to this website and not all the pictures survived the move. I’ve since added pictures of my own, having long lost Jill’s. 🙁
A picture?
Yep, I agree, do you have any pics? Although, as lazy as I am, I know I won’t spend the time to make them.
You are one awesome mom!
oooh my daughter would love to make those!
I wish I had a digital camera (cast off anyone? :O))!
I have pics of the ornaments, but none without editing my children out. Tried it, and the remaining pic was too small to show up on the blog. Just picture them like gingerbread ornaments. They are just a tad over 1/4 inch thick and dark brown. You could almost be fooled into thinking they’re wooden. I’ll email you a pic if you post your email address.
They won’t disappoint, I promise! In the past we’ve also made applesauce cinnamon ornaments. That takes equal parts applesauce and cinnamon (yep LOTS of cinnamon) and you roll it out and cut your shapes and then let them air dry till done. They’re pretty fragile if you roll them too thin.
I forgot to say, if you make the applesauce cinnamon ornaments, don’t forget to punch your hole at the top with a straw for later hanging, and in the couple of days that they take to dry, flip them over occasionally so they dry evenly. This project is SUPER easy and quick.
What is alum and where do I get it?
Alum is a white powdery stuff that you buy in the spice aisle at any grocery store. They’re usually in alphabetical order, so it would be next to allspice probably. :O) Thanks for stopping by, Alisa!
I made these today. Alum is found in the spice aisle at the grocery.
They aren’t pretty yet. I will send a photo when I get them pretty as can be. hahah If I can do that. It does take a lot of salt, so much that I had to dump the salt shaker as well. hahaah Thanks for a great project.
Jill, are they pretty yet? :O) If you want to send me a pic, I’ll post it here! I’m so glad you gave them a try…we just love ours.
Did you get the picture I sent Mary?
Yes! I’ll post it soon, thanks so much, Jill!
OHhh I am so excited to try these! We only bought the bare minimum of ornaments last year because with so many people to buy for we were trying to save $$. So these would be great! I am looking forwards to them! I think if I can find all the stuff I need at the local grocery store I might try em tonite!!!
Oh and if you remember Mary could you maybe email me a pic? I would love to see what they are supposed to look like (as opposed to what mine will turn out like…LOL a kindergartener’s art project!)
Geri, I’m glad you asked, as you’ll note from the P.S. at the bottom of this post, I did have a picture on here, but it didn’t transfer well with the move. Always meant to come back and edit in a couple of my own pics, and seeing this reminded me I hadn’t!
They turn out lovely. I like having an assortment. We have trees, hearts, music notes, gingerbread men, and stars on our tree. Some years they look a bit dry, so I lightly spray them with cooking spray to bring back the nice brown finish.
Hope you like them! Just don’t roll them too thin!
Forgot to say, be sure and look at the original post, for the two pictures I uploaded!
OK now they are working. They weren’t working before this morning when I looked. They look great! I can’t wait!
Great! We got ours out last night and I had to rub them with cooking spray, but they still look pretty good! One has a crack, but it’s holding together. Pretty good for this many years later!
That’s great! I went to the store here last night (hoarse voice and all!) and couldn’t find the alum. So I asked the guy working there (poor guy probably couldn’t understand me since I was almost losing my voice with this cold) but they don’t have it. Guess I have to wait till I go into town this weekend…can’t wait though! There is a huge Craft Fair that my Mom, sister and I always go to (poor sis won’t be there this year though!) and I can do that while I am there!! I’m just vibrating with excitement…oohhh the goodies there!!! YUMMY! And hopefully the health food store will have the Alum for me.
Really? Alum is just in the spice section of our grocery store. It’s white. Hope you find some.
Have fun at the craft fair! I haven’t been near one of those in ages… 🙁
Yeah that’s where I was looking. But this is the small grocery store where I live. Tomorrow I will be heading into the big town nearby to check their store out. And our town (well where I grew up) always had tons of craft fairs at Christmas so we went to most of them. I have missed all of them this year but the one tomorrow is the one that my Mom, sister, and I always go to. It’s huge and has tons of yummy foods so I can’t wait. It will probably be the only one I get to make it to this year. Last year I put Kyle in a carrier and it was so easy but his 30 lbs this year give me a back-ache if I carry him longer than 15 minutes. So it will be the stroller for him!
Have a wonderful time, and I hope you find some great deals!
I finally found it!! It took awhile and several stores…but got some now and hopefully gonna make these tonight!!
Good! Wow, you’re getting a lot accomplished for having a cold! Did you have a great time at the craft fairs? Find anything you had to have?
Cold’s all gone now except for a stuffy, head and nose. But I’m feeling great now. And yes…I found a thing (or two…or three) at the craft fairs. I never got around to making any jams this year because I was too afraid of having the boiling pot of water around with Kyle so I bought a ton of jams…and there is a woman that I had bought some home-made soap from last year and it smelled divine so I bought quite a bit more this year. LOL and remnants of the cold were still bugging me while I was going through it so when I saw a stall advertising “Cold & Flu Tonic” I had to get some! It’s garlic (30 cloves/bottle), apple cider vinegar, and honey…it smells revolting but I thought it would be neat to see if it works next time. They always have cute home-made kids clothes but there were none this year!! I was so upset. Oh! And I got alot of dried fruit, fruit leather, and some mulled cider packets from this one stall that is the primary reason for me going to this craft fair. So our pantry is pretty stocked up right now (but it’ll probably only last a month with us…if we’re lucky!).
Yum! Sounds like you need a dehydrator! I love mine for drying fruits and making “fruit roll-ups” etc. Which reminds me I haven’t done that in a while!
Glad you had a great time, fun hearing about your purchases, I love those homemade soaps/loations/butter rubs…what a treat!
Me too! There was a mango body butter I really wanted to get but it was really expensive so I held off. We needed soap though and this stuff smells unbelievable. I got a citrus one, green tea (which smells like spearmint-divine!), sambuca (the licorice smell is SO yummy), lavender, peppermint, and cinnamon.
And my DH was just saying today the same thing about the dehydrator…I would love to be able to make my own!!
Uh-oh, hopefully he won’t get you one of those instead of a sewing machine! 😉
I love the green tea body scents! Mmm! I have some in my bathroom cupboard!
I was shocked…I loved it and I never knew green tea smelled like that!! Yummy!
Lol…I would be happy with that…but I would be eating all the time if I had one because I would make fruit leather always!!
It’s good stuff, especially homemade and mixing different fruits together…
I make these almost every year for myself, friends and family. I have decorated them and also left them for others to decorate as well. It has always been a pleasure to do these ornaments and a fun project for the kids too. P.S. I had lost the recipe I had and Thanx to you I now have it again! Happy Holidays Everyone!!! 😉
I’d love to know how you decorated them!! Does it take a special frosting to endure storage? My original dough ornaments are several years old, and as long as I oil them up every Christmas, they look great. They’ve lost some of the good smell though.
I’m so glad you took time to comment, Toni! Happy baking!