Home > Seasons and Holidays > Christmas Activities, Crafts and Recipes > Christmas Scented Salt Dough Recipe and Star Garland
ByCerys ParkerPublished on
Last week when T was off school the 48 hours after a stomach bug she and I started to get some Christmas crafts ready for the following weeks. I love decorating the house with homemade decorations and natural ornaments, as well as making little decorations for the tree, like our baker’s clay snowmen and salt dough decorations thatwe can keep and remind us of different years we spent together creating. So we got creative, invented our own salt dough recipe based on my favourite quick and easy salt dough recipe, and produced a Christmas Scented Salt Dough Star Garland.
Go to Recipe
For a while, I’ve been looking at cinnamon ornaments like these from Completly Delicious but with the quantities of cinnamon used and apple sauce something that we haven’t got around the house they would be expensive to make, but the idea of them being scented so that the smell is released into the home is something that I wanted to try and capture as well as create a pretty decoration that we could use for Christmas and possibly throughout winter. I love the smell of Christmas Spices – cloves, orange, cinnamon, ginger, nutmeg and of course, pine so raiding my spices cupboard and the baking shelf we got mixing to see what would appear.
What You'll Find on This Page
Materials Needed
Full measurements are included in the printable Christmas Scented Salt Dough Recipe Below.
- Plain flour
- Cooking or table salt
- Warm water
- Ground ginger
- Ground cinnamon
- Ground cloves
- Orange essence (or Wild Orange Essential Oil)
- Straw or chopstick or knitting needle
- Star shaped cookie cutter
- Ribbon
- Needle
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Making the Christmas Scented Salt Dough
In a large bowl add the flour, salt, ground spices and the orange – add in half of the cup of water and mix together, as the dough forms add more water until you have collected together all of the dough in a good ball that isn’t too dry or wet.
If it is too wet then add a little more flour to the mix.
Once you have the dough transfer to a lightly flowered surface and knead well.
Roll out and use a cookiecutter to create the shapes. We used a star shaped cutter.
Once they are cut out take either a straw, chopstick or knitting needle and poke two holes into each star as if you were turning it into a button.
On a baking tray lined with greaseproof paper and lay out the stars. They will not spread or grow so you can lay them quite close together.
Place in the oven between 50C and 100C and leave for 1 hour.
Turn overthe stars and return to the oven for at least another hour – the stars will change colour from a brown to a beige. The smell whilst they are drying in the oven are amazing.
Leave to cool.
You may find when they come out of the oven you need to reopen the holes a little bit – a chopstick or knitting needle gentle pushed through will clear any salt dough from the holes and allow you to easily thread the ribbon through.
Once they are cool thread the ribbon onto the needle – I used a wool needle and T found this really easy to thread through the holes.
Decide how long you wish your garland to be – I wanted ours to wind a couple of times around the tree so measured it out with a swag and cut the ribbon a little longer to put some ties in place.
T then threaded the ribbon through the holes leaving a small gap between each star and we hung it onto our tree.
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Christmas Scented Salt Dough Recipe
Cerys Parker
Scent your home naturally with ornaments and decorations created with this Christmas Scented Salt Dough using Kitchen Ingredients.
5 from 4 votes
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Recipe Video
Ingredients
- 275 g plain flour
- 125 g table salt
- cup Up to 1 of water
- 2 teaspoons ground ginger
- 2 teaspoons ground cinnamon
- 2 teaspoons ground cloves
- 1 teaspoon orange essence or 5 drops of Wild Orange Essential Oil
Instructions
Put the dry ingredients and orange essence or essential oil into a bowl and slowly add the water. Mix in the bowl to combine and then turn out onto a lightly floured surface.
Knead until smooth, then roll out to around 1/2 cm thick.
Use a cookie cutter to cut out shapes.
Don't forget to add the holes with a chop stick.
Place on a lined baking tray and put in the oven at the lowest settings for 2-3 hours. Turn over and return to the oven till they are dry.
With some ribbon on a large eyed needle thread your shapes onto a ribbon to hang.
Tried this recipe?Let us know how it was!
More Christmas Salt Dough Decorations to Make
Love salt dough! Why not try some of these other Salt Dough Ornaments and Decorations.
- Create Salt Dough Reindeer to hang on the Christmas Tree
- Some coloured and scented Gingerbread Men Decorations
- How about some Stamped White Salt Dough Gift Tags for presents this year
Author
Cerys Parker
Cerys is a marine biologist, environmental educator, teacher, mum, and home educator from the UK. She loves getting creative, whether it is with simple and easy crafts and ideas, activities to make learning fun, or delicious recipes that you and your kids can cook together you'll find them all shared here on Rainy Day Mum.
