Cinnamon stars

there was supposed to be a delightful smell of cinnamon floating through the house as they cooked, well I had the most gruesome of colds and couldn’t smell a thing,

A few years ago I was intrigued by something I saw in a magazine, cinnamon stars which look like gingerbread but are made of apple sauce and ground cinnamon, and were said to smell wonderfully and last for years.(NB, These are decorative only, not for eating) What an excellent idea I thought, but no recipe. Recently on Pinterest I found a number of pins which gave instructions so I decided to have go.

.all you need to make cinnamon stars
A cup of apple sauce liquidised to make sure there were no lumps in it.
A cup and a half of ground cinnamon and extra to use for rolling out
Mix together to form a dough, roll out to a quarter inch thick
Cut with shaped cutters of your choice, I bought some star cutters specially.
(and then found the ones I had worked better)I think the mixture I had wasn’t dry enough, and so the shapes were a little ragged round the edges, a drier mixture might have produced a crisper edge.
Use a skewer to make a hanging hole in each one, or two if you want to string them on a ribbon like a garland.
Bake for an hour at 180c or the lowest gas setting.

cinnamon stars
Now comes the disappointing bit, there was supposed to be a delightful smell of cinnamon floating through the house as they cooked, well I had the most gruesome of colds and couldn’t smell a thing, but then neither could anyone else. When they were cooked they looked rather mottled and cracked, not like gingerbread at all, and they don’t smell of much either. I will take a nail file to the edges in the hope of improving the finish, and if I think it’s worth it I’ll string them on ribbon for a garland to go on the tree, next year.
If you fancy having a go yourself, have plenty of cinnamon to hand to make sure you achieve the right consistency, and to make sure the edges are crisp. If you don’t have star cutters, hearts or any Christmas shape would work , or gingerbread man perhaps.