DIY Play Dough

Last Christmas a friend of mine gave my children a Gold Medal Flour Children's Cookbook. It has delicious recipes as well as some craft recipes.

My oldest has been playing with Play Doh since he was a toddler. My current toddler is not trusted with said dough, he eats it, he throws it, he feeds it to the dog, he smears it into any nearby surface. None of which is cool with me.

I was always afraid to make play dough. Not sure why, maybe I didn't think it would turn out or it would be lumpy and look bad. Ok, yeah, those are the reasons I never made play dough.

Yesterday I decided to give it a try. I used the recipe in the cook book mentioned above.

It was easy (besides my arm getting sore from stirring)!

Turned out pretty good, right? You want to give it a try now, huh? 

Here is the recipe:

Ingredients

1 Cup (Gold Metal) all-purpose flour
2 teaspoons cream of tartar
1/2 teaspoon of salt
1 cup water
1 tablespoon vegetable oil
15 drops of food coloring

How To
1. Put all ingredients in 1-1/2 quart saucepan. Cook over medium heat about 4 minutes, stirring very hard, until mixture forms a ball. (Hardest part, your arm will feel fatigued when you are done!)

2. Take ball of dough out of saucepan, and let stand on counter 5-10 minutes to cool.

3. Squeeze dough about 30 seconds or until it is mixed and smooth. Cool completely. Play.

As far as storage, GM Flour suggests storing in refrigerator up to 2 weeks. My MIL makes play dough, she has never stored it in the fridge and it lasted months, rather than weeks. I don't plan on putting it in the fridge. Have you made dough? How did/do you store it?

This recipe makes a ball of dough roughly the size of a soft ball.

Besides just free play in the dough. I use it for home school/educational purposes as well. 

Here we used alphabet printouts from 1+1+1=1.

There is a different page for each letter. Each letter has an animal that also starts with the letter.

We also used our red and blue play dough to discuss colors. We mixed red and blue to make purple play dough.

This was a great recipe, I'll probably never buy Play Doh again!

Have you tried to make your own play dough? Did you succeed? 

Have you wanted to, but like me didn't want it to be a flop?