Applesauce ornaments

There are a few things I’ve learned are traditions in both homeschool preschool and preschool classrooms. One of those is applesauce ornaments. I don’t particularly remember doing this, but in talking with friends they all get this nostalgic look in their eyes as they say, “Oh yeah, and when you get them out, it makes your house smell like cinnamon,” armed with this knowledge I set out to make some applesauce ornaments as part of our homeschool Christmas, only it didn’t quite go as planned… It is a memory that is talked about every now and then.

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Applesauce Ornaments Recipe

1 cup cinnamon

1 cup applesauce (If you feel adventurous, you could try making your own applesauce)

1 tablespoon glue

1. Mix all the ingredients together. I think mine was probably a little wet, but it all mixes together fairly easily. Wow, Batman sure does look drugged in that picture.

2. Roll it out, ideally to about quarter inch thickness.

3. Cut out the ornaments with Christmas cookie cutters*. After you’ve cut them out use a straw to cut a hole in the ornament.

4. Place on cookie sheet and let dry. I put it in the oven at 200 for about 30 minutes or so, and turned them every 10 minutes.

Applesauce ornaments are all done and waiting for the kids to get up from their “nap.” If nap is what it’s called when they stand up there and yell, “now can I come down?”

A brief interruption to mention some other fun preschool ideas

• Nature Study for Preschoolers
• Preschool Dinosaur Unit
• Ocean Animals Preschool craft book
• Preschool Apple Unit
• Itsy bitsy Spider Book

Once the applesauce ornaments are cooled down you can decorate the ornaments.  We used sharpies, but I think the Silver Sharpie or white puff paint
would work better.

Edited to add: Ummmm….. very important thing to do. Make sure you label these as NOT FOOD. Otherwise poor unsuspecting husbands will excitedly think it’s a cookie and eat them. I’ve been told they don’t taste good.

Why the applesauce ornaments are still talked about

I had left the newly baked applesauce ornament sitting on the cookie sheet cooling, and they smelled amazing. You could smell the cinnamon all throughout the house.

Unfortunately, I didn’t think to put any warning on them, because I knew these weren’t real cookies, and the kids knew they weren’t real cookies, so no one would eat them.

Then my husband came home from work early, and thought, “Those cookies sure smell great, I’ll try one.”

He found me a minute later and said, “The cookies you just baked are terrible, did you forget to put sugar in them?”

Horrified, I explained to him, they weren’t cookies, but applesauce ornaments designed to smell good in with our Christmas tree.

I’m writing this particular anecdote over a decade later, and when the kids find the remnants of the ornaments, which by the way do still smell faintly of cinnamon, they retell the story of how Daddy accidentally ate one of their ornaments, which segues into the story of how my Dad accidentally ate a bagel that was actually a dog treat.

All in all, it’s still a rather amusing story to go with our various Christmas memories.

More Christmas Fun

• Middle School Christmas Fun
• Saint Boniface and the Christmas Tree
• Christmas in Mexico
• Christmas in Sweden
• Christmasy story bracelet