Martha Stewart's Cinnamon Bird Ornaments

For some people, cinnamon ornaments are a tradition. I'd never made them before, and I'm not sure I should have started with a recipe from Martha Stewart. Martha's recipes tend to be pretty difficult, I find. But use this recipe I did to craft some very yummy-smelling ornaments, even if they didn't exactly look as perfect as something Martha herself would make.

The original recipe called for bird cookie cutters or the use of a bird template (printable from Martha's website) and an X-acto knife. I didn't have bird cookie cutters, and I didn't have an X-acto knife, so I just used some holiday-themed cookie cutters that I already owned. I thought the cute mitten cookie cutters would be just perfect, but you could also do snowmen or Christmas trees or whatever you want!

If you don't know, cinnamon ornaments are made by mixing applesauce, LOTS of ground cinnamon, and craft glue. (I really thought that these were going to turn out terrible and that Martha Stewart was making me use up all of my ground cinnamon. That stuff is expensive!)

I mean, I thought it was hard to mix the ingredients together. And then it was hard to really work with the dough. I tried to roll it out as smoothly as I could without breakage, but some of the mittens (as seen above) were a little cracked. And then they baked that way.

Oh well! The fun thing about these is that once they bake and cool, you use glitter to decorate them, so you can cover up any imperfections!

Pretty, right? Just squeeze out craft glue where you want your glitter, and then shake the glitter onto the ornament, shake off any excess (into a small bowl so you can save the glitter and pour it back into the glitter container), and then let dry. Before you bake the ornaments, you poke a hole in the top with a straw so that after baking and cooling and decorating, you can thread a ribbon through the hole for hanging.

If you have the patience to work with the ornament dough, then these would make a super cute Christmas gift or a fun family activity when decorating your tree. The cinnamon scent is supposed to last for a long time, too.

Here's another recipe for making cinnamon ornaments from McCormick. I don't know if this one would be easier. It might be because it doesn't call for craft glue (although, I don't know what that means for the ornaments' storage potential from year-to-year) but you also don't have to look at Martha Stewart's picture-perfect bird ornaments.

What do you guys think? Have you ever made cinnamon ornaments before? What's your go-to recipe for making them? Share in the comments below!