Hacks to Use Cookie Cutters Beyond Cookies

Sweet Ideas: Hacks to Use Cookie Cutters Beyond Cookies

It's the best time of year to get out your cookie cutters, whip up your favorite recipes, and decorate your treats. But there's more you can do with those cookie cutters. Change up the holidays with these fun cookie cutter craft ideas.

Cookie Cutter Ornaments for Decorating and Gifts

Use cookie cutters to make ornaments — or use them as the ornaments! To make ornaments, roll out modeling clay and cut out shapes with the cookie cutters. Use a straw to poke a hole in the top of each to attach ribbons or hooks for hanging after the clay bakes.

Make an easy dough that smells amazing by combining 3/4 cup each of white glue, cinnamon, and applesauce. Roll it out and then cut your ornaments. Allow them to dry. You can also tie ribbons on cookie cutters to use as ornaments for an old-fashioned look.

Cookie Cutter Hacks to Brighten Your Table

When you're looking for new ways to dress up your table, grab your cookie cutters. Use them to cut seasonal shapes from cheese, breads, and sliced lunch meats. Firm fruits and veggies are easy to cut into shapes. Try pineapple, watermelon, and cucumbers. Create festive designs using the cutters as templates to sprinkle powdered sugar on cakes on brownies. Or, cut single-serve, shaped pieces from cakes and brownies.

Make Crafts and Gifts with Cookie Cutters

You could package a few cookie cutters with a cookie mix as a gift. To make it more unique, attach your own special recipe. Or, fill a cutter with melted beeswax and add a wick for a homemade candle. Try these festive ideas, too:

• Melt all those broken crayons into fun new shapes by adding a mix into a cookie cutter and melting it together in the oven. Cover a baking sheet with parchment paper and arrange cookie cutters on it. Add colorful crayon chunks to each cutter and bake at 200 degrees Fahrenheit for 15 minutes. Allow things to cool for about 20 minutes, and then pop the big, fun crayons out of the cutters.
• Make bird feeders to give as gifts and decorate your trees outside. Prepare unflavored gelatin with 1/4 cup of water and heat until the gelatin dissolves. Add 3/4 cup birdseed. Place the cookie cutters on wax paper, and then fill them partially with the seed mixture. Stick loops of string into each feeder and cover with more of the birdseed mixture. Allow the feeders to set up overnight.
• Create festive tree ornaments. Line a baking sheet with wax paper. Line with cookie cutters with pipe cleaners twisted through the tops to use later as hangers. Fill each cutter with crushed peppermint candies. Heat them in a 300 F oven until melted. Remove the sheet from the oven and allow the candy to set up. Use the pipe cleaners to hang the ornaments on the tree.

Cookie cutters are an age-old part of the holidays. Now you have new ways to work them into your celebrations.