I loved playdough when I was a kid, I had one of the little machines too that you push your playdough through and out squidges a big addition sign-shaped sausage to make things with. It never dawned on me that you could make your own playdough until my brother was around 3 years old and our Nana made some for him. This week the weather hasn’t been reliable so I decided on a whim to make some playdough yesterday.

To make this, you will need:
Plain flour
Salt
Cream of tartar
Water
Food dye, kool aid or jelly
Oil

Also, I made mine in pans with a curved side which was awkward when it came to heating it up. Straight-sided pans work much better, if you have them.

Put a cup of flour into a saucepan

Add half a cup of salt

And two tablespoons cream of tartar

Mix this together with a cup of water

Mix until it’s smooth. Don’t worry too much at this point if your playdough is lumpy, but to avoid that, sieve the dry ingredients together before adding the water.

You’re now ready to add your dye. I’m reliably informed that you can use a packet of kool-aid for this but I didn’t want to waste the little kool aid I have on an experiment in case it didn’t work out so we’ll try that next time. I’m also told you can use jelly but I haven’t found the quantities for that, so instead I used a teaspoonful of food colouring in each pan.

Which looks like this

until you mix it all in, when it’ll look like this

Once you’ve mixed up your coloured dough, you want to add two tablespoonfuls of oil to your mixture.

Put your dough onto a medium heat and stir constantly until the dough sticks together and comes away from the side of the pan. This happens pretty quickly so be careful that your dough doesn’t burn onto the bottom of the pan. Once you can get it into a ball it’ll look something like this.

Leave it to cool down for five minutes or so, then pick your ball up and knead it so that the rough outside smooths down. You’ll be left with a nice smooth, shiny lump of playdough that should last a month or so. Like standard playdough, it goes hard if it’s left out in the air at which point it’s probably wise to ditch it and make a new batch up. Also, you can choose not to dye your playdough and instead, make your shapes, bake at 180 degrees for 20 minutes or until your structure has gone solid then paint and varnish it.

Posted under for the kids, with the kids