Play-dough

Recipe:
– 3 cups of plain flour
– 1 1/2 cups of salt
– 6 teaspoons of Cream of Tartar
– 3 tablespoons of oil (vegetable oil if you want it to be safe in case of it being eaten)
– 3 cups of water

*Stir over medium heat until it comes together into a dough (this is obvious)
*knead for at least 3 minutes

I got this recipe from one of my good friends, which she got from her mum and that has been tried, tested and perfected over the years in her nursery.

It was super easy and straightforward to make and produced great quality play dough. I was worried about not knowing when it was ready during the cooking part, but it couldn’t be clearer – you basically stir it until you can’t any more and as you are stirring the ingredients to form a dough ball in the pot that you just lift out and knead.

I decided to spice up the straightforward recipe and added some food colouring and flavourings into the dough. I divided my kneaded dough into 5 equal pieces. For each one I added the extra ingredients and kneaded until they were all incorporated;
-I added green food colouring and mint extract to make green mint playdough.
-I added red food colouring to make red playdough
-I added turmeric powder and lemon extract to make yellow lemon playdough
-I mixed red food colouring and turmeric powder and added orange extract to make orange playdough.
-I added cocoa powder and chocolate extract to make brown chocolate playdough.

I found that the pieces I added dry ingredients like the cocoa powder and turmeric powder became much drier and needed more oil added. The flavour extracts compensated for this a little, but a small amount of extra oil or a slash more water was also useful, especially after they were used a few times.

I stored the balls, wrapped in pieces of clingfilm and tied in a nappy bag, in the fridge. You could equally use an airtight container, but I would advice wrapping the individual balls up to keep them nice and pliable. They kept for a good few weeks and were great fun to play with and explore.

We used the playdough in all sorts of ways: to model with, to explore letters and numbers though stamping, in messy play and in our Pirates treasure chest to hide and stamp the treasure.