A Day for Homemade Playdough (& Recipe)!

Pinterest is all kids of awesome. Seriously. All you Pinterest addicts out there will totally understand when I say that every night when I sit down with a cuppa after the Little Lion has gone to bed, I scroll and scroll and find a million and one things that inspire me and that I mentally file away under the 'I have to do that one day!' list. 

I'm constantly looking for things to do with my Primary School kids and with Carter, and homemade Playdough was at the top of the list. We do have a couple of containers of the store bought stuff here, but I'm not keen on the smell of it and there's something thats just comforting about making stuff at home. I remember as a kid making a batch of Playdough with mum nearly every week, and I wanted Carter to have the same memories as me. 

So, Pinterest came up with the goods for me and gave me a link to the perfect PlayDoh recipe from Musings from a Stay at Home Mom. As soon as Carter saw what we were doing, that was it. Full on excitement! 

Wanna make it? Here's what you need, and what you need to do....

Homemade Playdough! 

• 1 cup of Plain Flour
• 1 cup of water
• 2 tsp of Cream of Tartar
• 1/3 cup of salt
• 1 tbsp vegetable oil
• Food Colouring

Grab all the ingredients out, and make sure you have the right quantities before you begin. Nothing worse than starting a recipe then finding out later you don't have enough of a certain ingredient! 

My Little Lion carefully measuring out the plain flour... and then losing half of it trying to transfer it to the saucepan! 

Place the plain flour, salt and cream of tartar into a large saucepan.

Add the oil and water, and turn the hotplate on a low to medium heat. 

Start mixing all the ingredients together. Now, I really need a wooden spoon, but every time I'm out I forget to buy one. Ridiculous, huh? So, I'm stuck using a dessert spoon to mix it all. It will be lumpy initially, but the more you stir it, the smoother the consistency will be. It doesn't take very long, so make sure you keep an eye on it.

See? Super smooth! Now, this is the time to grab that food colouring and add it in. If you wait any longer, it will be too difficult to stir it. You can use normal food colouring, but for ours I used the gel paste to give it a super bright colour hit. I'd lined them all up and Carter had instantly chosen his favourite colour...

...blue. Yes, typical. Mix the food colour in thoroughly so it looks a little something like...

...this! Gorgeous colour huh? Carter was in awe at this stage, and continued to stare at it, watching it change. Keep stirring the mixture until it because difficult to mix and your bicep and shoulder starts to burn. 

As soon as the mixture starts to come together and pull away from the saucepan, you'll know that the Playdough is done. Voila! Hello hours of fun, happiness and creativity in the shape of a blobby mess!

Turn the Playdough out onto some baking paper and let it cool for a minute. Carter wasn't too sure about the whole thing, but as soon as I told him he could touch it, it was on. From the look on his face, I might as well have given him a million dollars. Kids are easily pleased, aren't they?

'Squishy Mummy!'

Knead the Playdough until all the lumps are gone, and honestly this shouldn't take too long. Well, I didn't get much of a chance as I had a kid next to me eager as anything to get his hands back onto that blue lump. 

'Best, Thing. Ever!'

Aaaaaaand, now we play! 

When you're finished, place it in an airtight container or ziplock bag and pop it in the fridge. As you can see the recipe makes a fair bit of Playdough, so you an always halve it, or use two saucepans for two colours. 

Speaking of colours, I've just had an order from my Little Lion for the next batch to be green. I know what we'll be doing all afternoon now...

You can find this idea, along with stacks of others on my Pinterest Board!