Gingerbread men ornaments

The town I live in has an annual event called "Santa's Workshop." It's an afternoon where local kids can come and craft various holiday things that they can then give as gifts or decorate with. This is my first year contributing a project, so I came up with the salt dough gingerbread man.

Typically salt dough is just flour, salt, and water. I've done this with my own kids for handprint (or pet paw print) ornaments. But this needed to be a project where the ornament was already done and baked, and the kids could just decorate it. Gingerbread men is a great solution- puff paint makes a perfect decoration that any kid can do.

In order to make the salt dough the right color, I added cinnamon to the recipe. I used my favorite gingerbread man cookie cutter, but I'd also love to do these as ginger bears. Really, any cookie cutter could be fun to decorate.

Gingerbread Salt Dough Ornaments

Ingredients:

• 2 cups all purpose flour
• 1 cup salt
• 1/4 cup ground cinnamon
• 1 cup cold water

Directions:

• In a large mixing bowl, combine flour, salt, and cinnamon.
• Slowly stir in water until dough is the consistency of cookie dough. Add additional water or flour as needed. You should be able to knead the dough without it being too sticky.
• Let the dough rest for 10-15 minutes.
• Roll out the dough to 1/4" thickness and use a cookie cutter to cut desired shapes.  Be sure to use a needle or skewer to poke a hole through the top of the shape if you intend to use it as an ornament.
• Place cutouts onto a foil lined baking sheet, and bake at 250 degrees for two hours, or until they are hard all the way through.
• Once cooled, decorate with puff paint and string onto a ribbon to use as an ornament.

Recipe adapted from irisheye101's Salt Dough.