Making salt dough decorations with kids is a lot of fun. This quick and simple salt dough ornament recipe just calls for three ingredients. Use cookie cutters of any size or shape to make ornaments, then decorate them with paint and craft varnish to retain them for future seasons. Attention: this dough cannot be eaten!
| Prep Time: | 15 mins |
| Cook Time: | 1 hr |
| Total Time: | 1 hr 15 mins |
| Yield: | 15 to 30 ornaments |
Ingredients
- 4 cups all-purpose flour
- 1 cup salt
- 1 ½ cups warm water
Instructions
- Preheat the oven to 325 degrees F (165 degrees C).
- Whisk together flour and salt in a mixing bowl until well combined. Gradually stir in water, about 1/2 cup at a time, until a dough forms. When it gets too difficult to stir with a spoon, use your hands to mix it.
- Transfer dough to a floured work surface and knead until soft and pliable. Roll out to a thickness of 1/8 inch; cut desired shapes with cookie cutters. Transfer dough shapes to ungreased cookie sheets; use a toothpick to make a hole in each ornament for hanging.
- Bake in the preheated oven until hard, about 1 hour, switching racks halfway through.
- Remove from the oven and let cool to room temperature. Decorate as desired with acrylic paint and craft varnish to preserve. Thread a string through each hole.
- kwalker
- Yield will vary based on the size of the cookie cutters you use.
Reviews
Delicious!
I suggest baking at 275° … the higher temperature created air bubbles in the ornaments.
Made recipe as described but ended up with large bubbles and very dark brown ornaments. Will try again on lower temperature.
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Always a fun project with the kids!
I made these 2 times the first one I followed step by step. The second time I did it differently..since the first dough was dry and hard to manage I used 1 cup all purpose flour 1/2 cup salt 1/2 cup water And added flour as needed so it wasn’t a sticky mess. Kneaded it for 5 minutes. Baked at 325° (d)
First, what fun to make with my kids! I also found that 3 hours and 25 minutes made them puff up, but we used straws to make the holes, as we had Christmas straws that are solid and were able to puff out the dough inside of them. They are cooling currently, and we will paint tomorrow. So, making memories will th my kids just like my mom did with me when I was little! Thank you for sharing this recipe!
I have made these 3 years in a row for my daughters Montessori class. I make 3 batches and end up with 90-100 ornaments. To reduce puffiness I cook at 275 for 1h 20mins and turn them halfway thru. I put a shallow pan of water on top shelf to prevent cracking. When rolling, if the dough starts to dry out I just wet my hands with warm water and knead smaller portions (including reworking the cut off remnants for additional pieces). I usually roll my dough to a quarter of an inch thickness. Bake on parchment paper to avoid sticking. Great recipe that I’ve had loads of success with.
I loved this recipe! They seem to be holding up really well. We added cinnamon to the mixture and then decorated with cloves for eyes and ornaments on our tree cut outs, etc. We separated an egg yolk and added food coloring to it to “paint” the tops of the ornaments. It gave them a beautiful/shiny/hardened finish. Can’t wait to make them again- they’re great gifts!
Turned out perfect! I used 2 cups of warm water though instead of 1 1/2 and I also heated up the water on the stove (on low) and then put the salt in that to let it dissolve a little. Then I slowly poured the water with salt into a bowl with the 4 cups flour. I kneaded the dough (added a tiny bit more flour to help knead) and the dough came out perfect and was very easy to work with. I also turned down the heat to 300 degrees F. These took about an hour in my oven, came out great!
no changes and it was great! Yes I will do it again.
Came out great. I didnt bake them for no where near an hour. Make sure you keep an eye on them and pull them out before they brown up.
This recipe is aweful. I did prints of my daughters hand and the ornaments puffed up during the baking process. Too hot oven, for too long and wrong ingredients, cream of tartar has to be an ingredient. so disappointing.
I got puffed up brown bread.
Awesome!!!!
Used for a girl scout event at a retirement home. Great texture and so easy to use. They are air drying now since we used non-bakable decorations, but will varnish when hey dry completely.
The tips for baking slower and at 300 instead of 325 were very helpful. The first tray i did at 325 and they are puffy!!! which looks okay on the snowmen, but the gingerbread men, not to much. Turning it down made for much less puff. Still a great easy recipe. Made way more ornaments that i will possibly need though!
I follow this recipe and I find that it puff too much . Some may like the puffiness but was not what I was looking for,
I followed the directions exactly, but found the resulting dough to be way too dry. The dough crumbled and cracked from the very beginning, was difficult to roll out and the shapes we cut have cracks in them. Major disappointment.
This recipe is perfect…I had to add a touch more water but otherwise it’s great… To get rid of the puffiness just place the ornaments on a sheet pan and then place another sheet pan on top during the baking process…keeps them flat! 😉
Perfect measurements for holiday fun with the kiddo! Thanks for sharing!