Gingerbread Salt Dough Ornaments

These salt dough ornaments are scented to look and smell like gingerbread! Learn how to make this fun and easy holiday DIY.

Last year I decorated the tree in my kitchen with homemade gingerbread ornaments. I loved the look and smell of the cute cookie cutout ornaments, but it took a long time!

This recipe for scented Gingerbread Salt Dough Ornaments is SO simple to make! Great for tree trimming and gift giving this holiday season. Did I mention how amazing they smell?!

This is one of those Christmas crafts that comes together so quickly and so easily! Use this gingerbread salt dough recipe to make pretty homemade ornaments for your Christmas tree, or give them to friends and family as gifts. Homemade is the best gift of all.

All the gingerbread men!

I have always wanted to make gingerbread ornaments to hang on my kitchen Christmas tree, so when I came across this gorgeous gingerbread man embossed rolling pin I knew exactly what I was going to do with it…use it to make Gingerbread Men Salt Dough Ornaments. Gingerbread men are the cutest.

These ornaments smell amazing!

I love the look and colour of gingerbread salt dough, but I also LOVE the smell of it! I have added a lot of cinnamon, ginger and cloves to this dough recipe because I wanted them to smell lovely, and they do! And let me tell you, when these are slow baking in your oven, your home will smell incredible…everyone will come out of the woodwork wondering what you’ve been baking all day.

Embossed is fun, but not necessary!

You don’t have to use an embossed rolling pin to make these gingerbread salt dough ornaments…using a regular rolling pin and a gingerbread man cookie cutter is just perfect. But if you happen to have bought an embossed rolling pin and you’ve been waiting for just the right thing to use it for, then these ornaments are it! You can use any patterns to make these…anything works.

It’s all in the details!

And because the pattern in the dough are little gingerbread men, what better shape to use than a gingerbread man cookie cutter! I love the detailing in the little embossed men in the dough…so cute!

Perfection is not the goal!

When I cut out the little men, I just randomly placed the cutter over the dough…I wanted them to be rustic and fun. All of the ornaments look a little different and I love that about them.

Keep rolling rolling rolling!

Once you cut out your first batch of ornaments, you will be left with scrap dough. So press those scraps into a ball and start again…keep doing this until all the dough is used up. This recipe will make about 20 small-ish ornaments. Then line all the little men on a parchment paper lined cookie sheet, press a hole into each ornament for hanging, then pop them into the oven for 2 hours at 250 degrees. So simple.

A tip for Gingerbread Salt Dough that turns white:

After baking you may notice that your ornaments might have a white tinge to them, that’s just the salt that rose to the surface during baking…it’s annoying but I have a fix for this! To get rid of this white, once the ornaments are cooled, rub them with a little bit of vegetable oil and they will return to their dark colour (see picture below for the before and after). Doing this also gives them a nice little shine. I actually don’t even mind how these ornaments look with the white texture…