Home Made Playdough

I first tried making playdough when I started teaching Kindergarten in Abu Dhabi. Then, once my son was old enough I started making it for him sometimes. I have tried a number of recipes over the years, including ones you have to cook. My favourite one and the one I come back to time and again now is from The Imagination Tree. You can see the original post here. The cream of tartar is the secret ingredient and really makes the playdough superior to other home recipes!

Here’s the recipe:

2 cups plain flour

2 tables vegetable / coconut oil

1/2 cup salt

2 tbsp cream of tarter (this can be hard to fine sometimes!)

1.5 cups boiling water

Food colouring

Glycerine (optional)

Pour all the dry ingredients into a bowl. Add the oil. Add your chosen colour to the boiling water and stir. Slowly pour the water into the bowl, you might not need all of it. Mix thoroughly, you may need to use your hands, until a ball of dough forms. Keep rolling and kneading with your hands until the consistency is just right. If it is too dry add a small amount of water, if it’s too wet and sticky add some more flour. Store in an airtight container to keep it from drying out.

The easiest way to get the colour into the playdough is by adding the food colouring to the water as detailed above. However, if you want different colours without having to make lots of batches you can add the food colouring later. This is what we did this week as L and A wanted to use the four food colouring colours that we had in the cupboard. We made the playdough without food colouring and then split the paydough into five balls (one to keep white). Using washing up gloves to protect our hands from the colouring we added a different colour to each ball. It does take some effort and a lot of kneading to get the colour really worked into the dough but it turns out well in the end.