Play Dough!

Today I want to share the world's greatest play-dough recipe with you.   This is the one I grew up playing with and it's so soft and stays fresh for what seems like forever.  

Here's what you need:

1 cup        flour

1/2 cup     salt

2 Tbsp     cream of tartar

1 cup       water with

2 Tbsp     vegetable oil

food coloring or gel colors

Now if you're thinking "What the heck is cream of tartar?" here's what you're looking for:

This tiny little box tends to be fairly expensive, so my advice would be to check out a bulk store like Bulk Barn.  This is where I picked mine up and it was WAY cheaper.  As you can see, I bought salt and food coloring there too (I didn't end up using the food coloring though...)

Combine all ingredients in a saucepan.  Cook on low heat stirring constantly until it forms a ball.  Store dough in an air tight bag at room temperature.

There's 2 ways to color your play dough. If you're using food coloring or gel colors, add it to the mixture in the saucepan.

Your other option (only if you're using gel colors) is to color it like you would fondant.  This is a good way to go if you're splitting a batch in half to make two different colors.

Using a toothpick, add some color to the dough, and mix in, continuing to add color until you reach your desired color.

I did the red and blue this way.  I did the yellow the other way, and to make the green, I did both - I took the yellow pot colored dough and added blue with the fondant method.  

I found some simple play dough sets at my local dollar store.  They had awesome cookie cutters:

And those things that you squish play dough through!

These sets came with some dough, but they were gross, kinda smelly, and kinda sticky.  I ended up throwing it out - who even knows what kind of garbage is in there?!

Because this play dough was for a friend's little girl turing 3, I made a card to go with the gift:

To package it all, I put it in a coffee can covered with scrapbooking paper and painted the lid.

Lastly, I wrote the recipe on the lid so that the parents are able to replace it whenever it gets dry and hard, or full of fuzz/dirt/etc.  :)  

This is a perfect gift for both girls and boys of all ages!