Homemade Play Dough

Making your own play dough is an excellent opportunity to keep the kiddos busy and have fun with them at the same time. Its easy, affordable, and fun!!

I have 2 different recipes for you, one with cream of tartar and one without. Cream of tartar is supposed to help with the elasticity  and longer shelf life, but I have made both recipes (with and without) with great results. Cream of Tartar can be expensive, at the supermarket it was almost $5 for a 2 ounce jar, but, that will give you enough for 4 recipes.

Here are the recipes.

Homemade Play Dough (with cream of tartar)

1 cup water

1 tablespoon vegetable oil

1/2 cup salt

1 tablespoon cream of tartar

Food coloring

Saucepan

1 cup flour

Gloves

Directions

Combine flour, oil, salt, cream of tartar in a saucepan.

Add water and mix. Cook under medium heat stirring constantly.

You will see that the dough starts to form.

 Keep stirring until the dough forms a ball without sticking to the sides of the saucepan.

Almost There!

Nice tidy ball, clean sides!

Transfer to a bowl to cool. 

Once is cool enough to handle, divide in 3 pieces. Flatten them out a bit and add a few drops of food coloring. I used gel food coloring. With the gloves on, knead until color is uniform. 

When ever we are working with a potential mess, I put some paper and  plastic wrap to help clean up.

Store this dough in an airtight container or a Ziploc freezer bag.

Add some glitter for some fun!

To make without the cream of tartar, substitute the cream of tartar with baking soda and follow the same cooking instructions. When cooking make sure to remove from heat and immediately transfer to a bowl. This is important to avoid overcooking it, if you leave it on the hot saucepan, the residual heat will continue to cook it. Do this as soon as the dough cleans itself from the saucepan as you stir it.

Now have fun with the kiddos!!

xoxo

Hecmi