Play dough recipe that works

My son is very fond of playing with play dough and there is never enough. Hence I have been trying to make play dough at home. I tried several times with different recipes. Most of them failed either because the consistency was not as expected, or in some cases the dough was too elastic or brittle. Finally, I found a recipe that worked pretty well. Here I’m sharing the same:

You will need:

  1. All purpose flour     2.5 cups
  2. Water                         2 cups
  3. Salt                              1 cup
  4. Cream of tartar        4 tsp
  5. Vegetable oil             1 tbsp
  6. Food color
  7. Zip lock bags and boxes

Steps:

  1. Mix all purpose flour, salt and cream of tartar together in a bowl.
  2. Add water and veg oil to it. 
  3. Mix well until no lumps are seen.
  4. Heat a pan on low to medium heat.
  5. Transfer the mixture to the pan.
  6. Stir until it gets a thick paste like consistency.
  7. Take it off the stove and cool it down. 
  8. Kneed it well.
  9. Divide the dough into the number of different colors needed. 
  10. Add food color to each and kneed well until the color is uniformly distributed. 
  11. Divide each color into two portions, one for immediate use and the other for storage in refrigerator. The portion for immediate use can be kept in small containers. I had saved the play dough containers that we had bought before and used it for this purpose. For the storage portion you can use zip locks.
  12. Keep refrigerated when not in use. 

Suggestions:

  1. To get better color and consistency use gel food colors instead of liquid colors.
  2. In case the dough turns out to be loose, try kneeding it with fresh flour until you achieve the right consistency. 
  3. If the dough seems moistened after being in refrigerator add some fresh flour and kneed the dough. 

It was a hit with my excited little beanie. We loved the whole experience of making it and playing with it. If you try this recipe at home please leave a comment and let me know how it turned out.

 

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