This post is courtesy of our contributor Chantelle of Dolled Up Design…Today I am excited to share a great gift or playdate activity for the kids this Holiday Season. This DIY Gingerbread Play Dough Cookie Making Kit is sure to spark creativity and fun with its scented dough and assortment of fun tools and candy inspired cookie decorations.
Baking and decorating cookies is a popular holiday tradition for a lot of families, but can be a lot of mess and effort. With this kit, kids can easily have the cookie decorating experience without all the spilled flour and sticky icing. Thanks to my free printables and a quick stove top recipe for the dough, it is easy to put together this fun semi-handmade activity for your own children or as a gift.
Gingerbread Play Dough Cookie Making Kit:
For my kit, I started with this great DUKTIG 7 piece toy baking set from the children’s section of IKEA. For only $12.99CDN it includes the cookie cutters, rolling pin, small cookie sheet and a couple cake tins. As soon as I saw it I knew it would be the perfect complement to the gingerbread play dough I was already planning on making. If there is no IKEA near you, another inexpensive option would be to buy a small cookie sheet, cookie cutters and rolling pin from the dollar store.
For the dough part of my cookie making kit, I made this wonderful gingerbread scented play dough. The recipe was simple to follow using basic kitchen ingredients and the rich brown color and spice filled scent make it feel like the real thing. I especially love that there is no food coloring involved – the color all comes from the spices and gets richer as the mixture cooks.
To package my dough, I came up with this cute printable to wrap around and make it look like a tube of store bought cookie dough. I simply formed my dough into a log shape and wrapped it tightly in plastic cellophane, taping along the seam and tying it closed with festive ribbon on each end. I then printed and cut out the file, and taped the label around the cellophane wrapped log.
The best part of making gingerbread cookies is the decorating, so I found a variety of different craft supplies to label as candies for decorating the cut-out dough shapes. I found Christmas themed sequins, google eyes, buttons, pom-poms, sparkly ribbon at the dollar store, as well as this set of cute plastic spice jars to package them all in. With the help of some cute matching labels, they look like something right out of the baking pantry!
For the finishing touch, I decided to use an inexpensive Christmas tablecloth to wrap up my set. Tied up with a thick ribbon, it looks festive and the tablecloth will work great as a playmat to catch all the dough crumbs and protect the table against the metal cookie cutters.
My kids loved playing with this set and making their own cookie creations to put on the cookie sheet. The new rolling pin toy was a big hit and they were excited to try out all the different decorations on their cookies. I am a bit of a perfectionist when it comes to my Christmas baking, so I love that this gives them the cookie decorating experience without all the spilled icing and chaos on my own cookies.
This set would make a great gift for any child on your Christmas list. It is a great family gift to share among siblings and I love that it encourage creative play amongst friends and family during the Holiday Season.
To get the free Cookie Dough Wrapper, Labels and printable recipe card, please click here for the FREE Gingerbread Play Dough Cookie Making Kit printables.
We’d like to send a big THANK YOU to Chantelle for sharing this super cute idea with us. Her parties are always easy to recreate and kids love them! Plus how awesome is it that she gave us the FREE printables?! Be sure to follow her on Facebook to stay updated on all her fabulous ideas.
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