Play Dough

When I was a child, my mom always made our play dough.  We very rarely had the store bought stuff.  I thought it was the best to be able to play with the warm dough, and when we had mashed all the colors together, or it dried out, Mom would make fresh dough.  Now that I have my own kids, I love making play dough.  I also love that I know exactly what goes into it and don't have worry when it goes into my daughter's mouth because everything is completely edible!  There are countless ways to make play dough, but this is how we always made it:

 Ingredients

2 cups flour

1/2 cup salt

3 tbsp Cream of Tartar

2 tbsp Cooking Oil

2 cups Water

Food Coloring as desired

Instructions

Combine all ingredients (except food coloring) in a medium saucepan. 

Cook, stirring constantly, over medium heat until the consistency of mashed potatoes (see photo below)

Move dough to a floured surface (I put it directly on my counter) and cool slightly

Knead until smooth and elastic.

Add food coloring as desired.  If you are only doing one color,  you can add it before kneading.  Note:  It will take a lot of food coloring if you want a dark color.  The dough we made this week was at least 30 drops of blue and about 6 drops of green. 

Store in Ziploc bags after completely cool. (Don't put it away until completely cool, or you risk the condensation making your dough too wet, and it will get moldy!)

This is always a hit with the kids and it lasts a long time as long as you are sure to put it back in the Ziploc bag when you are done playing. 

My 5 year old was nice enough to stop playing for a second so I could snap this picture :)