Please Don’t Eat This One.

In this post I will give you a recipe, as I usually do, but please don’t eat it. Please don’t serve it to your guests. Please don’t give it to your dog. Please don’t get it confused with pie dough. Please allow your kids to help you because I assure you, play-dough is something that every kid enjoys. I mean, really. Who doesn’t like play-dough? Yes, you can buy it, it’s not even that expensive, but isn’t everything better homemade?

This is a perfect project for a rainy day or sick day, you most likely have the ingredients on hand anyway, so I encourage you all to try it out with your kids. There are a lot of recipes out there for play-dough, most of them are similar, some don’t even require cooking, but this one is the best. My son and I made it today and I couldn’t stop playing with it myself, its texture completely whoops the butt of the store bought kind.

So, here you go – my first inedible recipe…go ahead, play with it.

*Play-Dough
(makes 4 softball sized balls)
-3 cups all purpose, white flour
-1 1/2 cups fine salt
-3 TB cream of tartar
-3 TB vegetable or canola oil
-3 cups warm water
-1-2 tsp vanilla extract
-food coloring*
——
-Combine all the ingredients except the vanilla and food coloring in a medium saucepan and stir over medium heat until very smooth. Keep stirring. After a minute or so, the dough will ball up and become firm. When this happens to all of it, turn the heat off and allow to come to room temperature, or cool enough to handle.
-Cover your counter top with wax paper and add the vanilla, add as much or as little as you’d like. This step isn’t necessary but it makes the dough smell good, keeps mold away and improves the texture. Knead until smooth.
-Cut into 4 equal sections and, with the food coloring, color each section as desired.
-To store, wrap tightly in plastic wrap and place in sealed containers. Stays fresh for several weeks if stored airtight. If you find that yours has hardened because it wasn’t sealed well enough, add a few drops of water at a time and knead it until it becomes soft again.

(*I always use the liquid food coloring because it’s cheap and easy to find, but the slightly more expensive gel kind allows you to use less to make a strong color.)