Easy and elegant, old-fashioned cinnamon ornaments and oven-dried oranges are so simple to make, look beautifully festive, and can be used for so many things!

Ingredients for Cinnamon Ornaments

  • 1 ¼ cup cinnamon seasoning, plus more for rolling
  • ½ Tbsp nutmeg seasoning, plus more for rolling
  • ½ Tbsp allspice seasoning
  • 1 cup + 2 Tbsp applesauce

Ingredients for Oranges

  • 5 -6 Oranges (I like Valencia oranges)

*Fresh Cranberries (if you’d like to make a garland)

Tools & Timing

  • Large mixing bowl
  • Beaters (optional but recommended)
  • Cutting board
  • Rolling pin
  • Cookie cutters
  • Cookie spatula
  • Cutting knife
  • 2 baking sheets
  • Parchment paper
  • Wire cooling rack (same size as baking sheet)
  • Tongs
  • *If making garland, rose gold jewelry wire (or fishing wire will work too) and a Large needle
  • Timing: 15 minutes to prep, 4 hours to bake; various time to use your ornaments and cranberries to decorate (depending on how you want to use them)!

So beautiful as part of a cranberry Christmas garland!

Background

I always love oranges and cranberries, so this year, I thought I’d use them to decorate! Often, you’ll see recipes using cinnamon ornaments or dried oranges and cranberries, but I thought they’d look so beautiful together…so I adapted a recipe for cinnamon ornaments…googled how to dry oranges…and now I’m sharing with you!

These cinnamon ornaments are adapted from Completely Delicious.

Step-by-step

Start with prepping your cinnamon ornaments

  1. Combine all ingredients in prep bowl. Mix until blended.
  2. Test the dough for readiness: You want the dough to be slightly sticky without being too wet…you can take a pretty good guess while the dough is still in the bowl, but you’ll really know when you roll out your dough if you’re good to go: if the dough cracks when you try to roll it, it’s too dry…put it back in the bowl and blend in a bit more applesauce…however, if the dough is too sticky to roll, put it back in the bowl and add more cinnamon.
  3. Once your dough is ready, roll it out using the same process you would for cookie dough: Shape it into a ball. Sprinkle your cutting board with some cinnamon and a bit of nutmeg. Place the ball into the middle of your sprinkled spices and press gently to create a flat surface. Sprinkle this with a few more spices, then begin to roll out your dough to ¼ in thickness. Be sure to change directions with your rolling pin to ensure that you roll out your dough evenly.
  4. Cover one baking sheet with parchment paper.
  5. Dip your cookie cutters into a bit of cinnamon and cut out desired shapes. Use your cookie spatula to transfer your ornaments to this baking sheet.
  6. Using a skewer, poke holes into your ornaments if you plan to string them onto something.
  7. Continue process until you have used all of the dough – you can gather up the scraps and reshape/re-roll them one more time if desired.

Prep your oranges:

  1. *Preheat oven to 200 degrees.
  2. Slice oranges into ¼ inch slices, discarding ends. Remove any seeds.
  3. Cover second baking sheet with parchment paper. Place your cooling rack on top.
  4. Place oranges in a single layer onto this second baking sheet.

Bake

  1. Place both baking sheets in the oven and set the timer for 2 hours.
  2. After 2 hours, use your tongs and flip the oranges. Return them to the oven.
  3. Check your cinnamon ornaments: if they aren’t dry, flip them and return them to the oven for an additional 30 minutes. If they are done, remove them from the oven.*Once cinnamon ornaments are done, remove this tray from the oven. Let ornaments cool completely on baking sheet (total of 2 – 2 ½ hours for cinnamon ornaments).
  4. Bake your oranges for another 2 hours (total of 4 hours for oranges).
  5. Remove oranges from oven and let cool.
  6. Use your new ornaments for various beautiful decorating projects! You can, of course, string them individually and hang them as ornaments…or…

Beautiful Garland Wreath Option

  1. Thread a large needle with jewelry or fishing wire. Choose your length and then tie a few knots on one end. Leave extra length on this end to later secure your garland to greenery (or an ornament hook). *After threading your needle with your choice of wire, leave extra wire without tying a knot – this will make it so you can thread your cranberries and ornaments without snagging (see pic below). Helpful tip: think about the length of your garland – long garlands are heavy! I had to use twist ties to attach mine to my wreath – next year, I plan on making three, smaller garlands so they are lighter 🙂
  2. Thread oranges, cinnamon ornaments, and cranberries (I alternate oranges and ornaments and use 10 cranberries in between). * To ‘hang’ oranges sideways, insert your needle through one segment, across the front of the orange, then back through the segment on the opposite side.
  3. Using your wire (or twist ties if this is easier for you), attach your garland to a wreath or greenery. Or artfully drape it if it’s not hanging…
  4. *Note: using this as a garland alone can be difficult since it’s heavy; if you’d like to do this, make sure to tie and attach your garland to something (bookshelf, other green garland, etc) every so often using your wire or twist ties for support!

Candle Holder Greenery

This one is easy….simply place your dried oranges, ornaments, and cranberries on a store-bought candle holder and enjoy!

Extra ornaments? Thread them individually to hang on the tree…or…use them for beautiful present decor:

Helpful Hints: to get thick twine through a needle, wet and twist the end of the twine before you thread (and use a large needle). You can thread through the back of an oven dried orange without showing thread too – shallowly push the needle into and through a segment of the orange.