Homemade Play Dough

I'm sure many of you have made your own play dough before.  If you haven't, try it!  It's easy, fast, inexpensive and you probably have most of the ingredients already in your kitchen.  I can remember my mother making big batches of dough for my brother and I, and playing with it while it was still warm out on our back covered porch on a rainy spring day.

This recipe makes one ball of play dough a little larger then the size of a tennis ball.  It is my favourite play dough recipe.  I made seperate batches for each colour.  You will get much more vibrant colours if you use gel paste food colouring over standard liquid food colouring.  The liquid Neon Brights food colouring does work well though.

Home Made Play Dough
1/2 cup all purpose flour
1/2 cup water
1/4 cup salt
1 Tbsp cream of tartar
1/2 Tbsp cooking oil
Food colouring as desired

Method
Combine all ingredients into a saucepan and cook over medium heat stirring until dough is hard to mix and forms a clump.  This will only take a couple minutes.  Remove from the sauce pan and knead until smooth on a flat surface (I used a plastic cutting mat) and until colour is well distributed.

Alternatively, you can knead in the dye after it has been cooked and turned out onto the flat surface, but I would recommend wearing plastic gloves or you will have some very colourful hands!  This is mainly why I prefer to mix it in while cooking the dough and make separate batches for each colour as it's almost fully mixed in before you even have to knead it.

If you want to make it a little more fun, add some scented extracts to the batch.  I added peppermint to the green, lemon to the yellow, almond to the blue, cinnamon to the red and orange to the orange.

You could also use kool-aid powder to dye your dough.  It will be vibrant and have a great scent!

Store the play dough in plastic baggies or a sealed container in the fridge when not in use.  If it gets a touch dry, you can mist it with a bit of water to soften it up again.  If your little one tries to eat it, don't worry, it's safe, just extremely salty!  They probably wont try eating it again!

What a great Easter present this would be, take a way gift for a party or just something to cheer up your little one on a rainy day.

Enjoy!