Foodies Tips

Salt Dough Christmas Ornaments

Helga Glaesel de BlandingDecember 17, 2016

This post is also available in / Esta entrada también está disponible en ESPAÑOL (SPANISH)

This is not an edible recipe, it’s a crafting recipe for salt dough Christmas ornaments… but we couldn’t resist sharing it with you! It’s a great project to make at home, we made these three years ago, and this year we still used them on our Christmas tree. We made two batches that year, so we could give a set of ornaments to grandmother, who is still using hers too! Honestly, I thought these were going last just one Christmas.

If you have the time, you can use this idea to make homemade Christmas gifts. The idea is to make them look like gingerbread cookies, so use your cookie cutters to cut out the shapes. Once they are baked, and they have cooled and air-dried for a day, you can paint them. The icing is made out of white puff paint, or other squeeze paint suitable for this sort of project, which you can find at the craft store. Get some white, black and red paint. Use the black paint to make eyes on gingerbread men, snow men or reindeer. Red can be used for a reindeer nose, and gingerbread man bow tie. White paint is great for snowflakes.

To make them glittery, you can use some white or silver glitter to sprinkle on the ornaments before the paint sets. We used some glitter glue and brushed it all over the ornaments before applying the paint on the edges. The baking time is a little long, at least three hours…but it’s necessary to make sure they dry properly. Otherwise, they can crumble, or become soggy. The weather in Guatemala is pretty humid, and some of the ornaments could get a little soft if you under bake them, I think mine took about 4 hours to get completely dry.

The photos in this post that show Kristen making the ornaments are from three years ago, at the time it didn’t occur to me to make a post to share the recipe, so the photos are from my phone. The ones that show the ornaments hanging from a tree, are from this year.

Helga

Salt Dough Christmas Ornaments

Yields: 24 medium-sized cookies
A Foodies’ Kitchen Original

Ingredients:
2 cups all-purpose flour
1 cup salt
¾ to 1 cup lukewarm water
cookie cutters
parchment or wax paper
a straw (to cut out the holes)
twine or thread
puff paint or other suitable paint
glitter
clear glue with glitter

Procedure:

Pre-heat oven to 250°F
Mix flour, salt and water in a bowl.
Knead it with your hands until it is smooth.
Transfer it to a floured surface and cut out shapes using a cookie cutter. Re-roll the dough until you have used it all. Use a straw to poke holes in them, so you can use twine or other thread through it after they are baked.
Bake for at least 3 hours. Be careful when removing them from the oven. They will be very, very hot!
Let them cool completely, and let them air dry for a day before painting them.
Decorate using puff paint, or other suitable paint.

Have you made this recipe?

Please let me know how it turned out for you! Leave a comment below and share a picture with the hashtag #thefoodieskitchen!

Want more?

You can subscribe to our newsletter and we’ll send you the monthly recipes! You can also keep up to date on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Pinterest or Tumblr.