Friday, December 10, 2010

How to make Microwave Salt Dough Christmas Ornaments.

(makes about 45 smallish ornaments)

Ingredients.
3 Mums
8 Kids
Massive collection of cookie cutters, paintbrushes, glue, paint, glitter and beads.
4 cups of plain flour
1 cup salt
1 1/2 cups of warm water

Method.
Measure salt and flour into large bowl, then gradually add water until thick dough is formed.

DSC_5451

Pinch off ball of dough for each child and let them go sick cutting out Christmas shapes.  I have some alphabet cutters so they all did their own initials, but then someone mentioned they were going to do an S for their friend Sophie and next thing we knew there was a rush on initials for friends/ teachers/ Santa / cats.  (I believe Astrid's 4yo is giving Basil an "L")

DSC_5452

Use a skewer to make a small hole at the top of each ornament so you can hang them with string later.

Put ornaments onto a microwave safe plate and nuke them.  The recipe said 1-4 minutes, but obviously my microwave is below par in the power stakes, it took much longer for ours to bake to requisite hardness.  If you have a strong microwave then nuke the ornaments a minute at a time, in ours we ended up going in 2 minutes bursts although Jenny all but scorched one lot so don't get too carried away with the longer bursts.

Allow to cool on baking rack, whilst nuking the next batch.

DSC_5455

When cool enough to touch, decorate!  We used paint, glitter glue, glitter, glitter paint and glitter spray paint.  After the kids had done their bit Jenny got a bit crafty with glue and stick on stuff which I thought looked great.

DSC_5457

Leave to dry, -maybe you could take everyone out for pizza in the park like we did- then thread a loop through skewer hole and hang on tree.  (We haven't done the thread-and-hang bit though, the ornaments are still drying and besides we haven't had our Decorate the Christmas Tree Advent Activity Card yet...)

DSC_5458

7 comments:

  1. great post!!my girls will love making these!!!

    ReplyDelete
  2. Totally going to have a go at this - thanks Stomp.

    ReplyDelete
  3. What great fun!! How much dough got eaten?

    I must confess, I love raw dough and usually sneak a bit when I am making a pie or pizza.

    That one has a lot of salt though, so maybe not...

    ReplyDelete
  4. Tom was very impressed with his even though the M got dropped and busted (might have been a leeetle overcooked). His Mum wants recipe, can you please send link?

    ReplyDelete
  5. Doh! I just read the recipe on your post didn't I?

    ReplyDelete
  6. yes, although she could do it with half the ingredients and fewer mums & childer if she wanted.

    Aunty I kept trying to get the kids to eat the dough but they mistrusted the sparkle in my eye. Quite a few of them thought we'd be eating them after they were cooked and presumably painted...

    ReplyDelete
  7. We had a kit for making those when I was little and my mother still has most of them! My brother was very good at painting and his are by far the cream of the crop, while mine were smeared and done in weird color combos.

    ReplyDelete

Don't let the cat get your tongue.