Make Cheap Christmas Ornaments

The basic materials are very simple: cinnamon and applesauce! A little acrylic paint and some ribbon or string would enhance the ornaments beyond their basic form. The recipe makes one dozen medium-sized cookie ornaments. These are cute enough to be used as pre-Christmas or hostess gifts. Consider giving a set of a dozen decorated gingerbread men in a tissue-lined box. One year I gave homemade greenery swags and wreaths, decorated with these gingerbread ornaments. If you have tiny cookie cutters, you can make little angels, trees, bears or gingerbread men for wreaths (be sure to poke a much smaller hole in the top of these than you would use for a regular sized ornament!). 

Want cookie cutters? Try ShopGoodwill.com,  which is the first Internet auction site operated by a nonprofit organization. When I did a search (click on ShopGoodwill.com to be taken to the baking page) there were several sets of cookie cutters, including a fancy all copper set. Don't forget to check eBay.com also. Very affordable cookie cutters often end up at  local second hand stores including those run by Goodwill,St., Salvation Army, and other thrift stores.


Need paint? Here is a site with a variety of cheap paint sites: eHow.com. One of the suggested sites is eBay.com. Thin ribbon can be found on eBay.com also. eHow also has links to "cheap gift ribbon, high quality gift ribbon, or free gift ribbon." They mentioned that they probably couldn't find it for you, free, on line, but they do have quite a few links for inexpensive ribbon. This site also gives you links to sales on wrapping paper, gifts, etc.

Ready to get started? Here we go:

Preheat the oven to 200 degrees.

Mix 4 ounces of ground cinnamon with 10 tablespoons of applesauce. 

If you do not have much ground cinnamon and plan to make several batches of this recipe, you will need a good cheap source of the stuff. Here it is: Spicebarn.com. A pound of the stuff (16 ounces) will make 4 batches of this recipe. Fortunately, applesauce is very cheap.