Cinnamon Applesauce ornaments

I am very pleased with this year's ornaments that I am making with the girls. Last year we used a salt dough recipe and baked it. I didn't like how they came out puffy and cracked all over. This year we used a dough with two ingredients:

3/4 cup applesauce
4.12 oz bottle of cinnamon

I did a double-take at the recipe thinking that somehow something must have been left out, but sure enough,it was just cinnamon and applesauce. Knead and roll with a rolling pin to 1/4 inch thick. Cut with cookie cutters. Punch holes for string/ribbon (to hang) with straw. Baking for 2 hours at 200 degrees Fahrenheit is optional (flip halfway). You can just let them sit at room temperature to dry (flipping often) for 48 hours instead. We baked ours because we wanted to paint them sooner. The recipe only makes about a dozen thin ornaments.

They came out smooth in texture and smell wonderful for years (was given one as a gift a couple years ago and it still smells great)!

We tried three different decorating styles: glitter glue, cheap glitter paint, expensive glitter paint. The glitter glue has the most sparkle but not much color. The cheap glitter paint was useless because there was virtually no glitter in it. The expensive glitter paint looked sparkly and had some color. I will probably let the girls continue decorating with all of them, but I like the silver glitter glue the best.

Loralynn loved painting her ornaments last year and she enjoyed it just as much this year. It has been a much quicker process this year which I appreciate, but I think Loralynn was disappointed that we ran out of ornaments to paint so quickly (we only had 12-- the next batch was still in the oven). Tana was more interested in mixing all the colors together in one dish and experimenting with dipping the different brushes. She got only some of the paint/glue onto the actual ornaments.

We plan to give 21 of the ornaments to her 19 classmates and two teachers at her German Kindergarten before the end of next week.

If you look closely, a hat on one of the snowmen has a bite taken out of it. This happened before I got the chance to explain to Tana that they were not cookies.