Salt dough macaroons ornaments - easy Christmas DIY

Recently I discovered for myself a magic called salt dough. We already made Christmas ornaments with it, a set of veggies and fruits for imaginative play and, perhaps my favorite, salt dough macaroons ornaments.

You can put a little hook in it and decorate a Christmas tree with it. Or they can be easily used in a play kitchen (if you are looking for ideas, check out my IKEA play kitchen hack).

Whatever way you use them, they are so beautiful and look so real that the only problem you'll have is to convince your kids these ornaments are made out of play dough. And even if they try it, it's completely safe, since it has only 3 ingredients.

Let's get into that.

Ingredients

1 cup salt
1 cup water
2 cups flour

The process

1. Mix 1 cup of salt with water and let the salt dissolve in water.

2. Continue stirring and add flour to the mix.

3. Knead the dough, cover it with wrapping paper and put it to the fridge for at least 30 minutes

4. Take out the dough and shape a ball. Try to make it very smooth, without any cracks, otherwise, they will expand while drying.

TIP: when working with salt dough, make sure to apply some hand lotion (my favorite that always works) since salt dough dries the skin.

5. From the ball, make a shape of a macaroon. With a little spatula, push 2 lines in the middle (they will be the equivalent of a filling)

6. Using a toothpick, punch holes on the outer sides of those 2 lines.

7. Let it air dry for a couple of days. If you are as impatient as me, dry it in the oven on very low heat. I think I did 200F for about 5 hours. They need to look completely white. If they have darker spots it means they are not finished and might break.

8. Now the fun part! Painting it. I used acrylic paint but I guess you can go with pretty much anything. It depends on what you have on hand. You can use a real macaroon for a reference or use your memory.