Playdough – Try Our Homemade Playdough Recipe

Playdough is the ultimate in childhood activities.

It can keep toddlers amused for ages, and is a brilliant tool in your toolbox when flying with a toddler. It’s never let us down!

It’s an activity both young and older children love, encouraging creativity and helping to develop those fine motor skills. It also keeps them away from screens and present in their play.

Its so easy and simple to make playdough at home. It serves as a dual purpose activity: you can enjoy making playdough with your toddler or child, then playing with it together too. It’s squishy squashy fun!

This playdough recipe does not require food colouring. For something a little different, it contains jelly crystals, which makes for a beautiful smell compared to traditional recipes, and it produces a beautiful colour. If you prefer to use food colouring adjust the consistency of the recipe accordingly until you get it just right.

Here’s the recipe!

Playdough Recipe

• 1 cup of plain flour
• 2 tablespoons of cream of tartar
• 1/4 cup salt
• 1 cup of water
• 2 tablespoons of cooking oil
• 1 pack of jelly crystals (and/or food colouring of your choice if you prefer)

Method

1: Mix the ingredients together in a small or medium sized saucepan.
2: Continue to mix consistently over a low to medium heat until thickened into desired consistency. Too much heat which will burn the mixture.
3: Take off the heat, place the playdough onto a cutting board and allow to cool.
4: Store in an air tight container or sealed bag and place in the fridge – or get squishing and squashing!

Playdough Recipe – Tips

• If the playdough is a little sticky, after it’s cooled, sprinkle a cutting board with flour and roll in small amounts until its no longer sticky.
• If the colours aren’t as bright as you’d like, add in your own food colours – the more colour, the brighter they will be. For something more natural, you can use foods! For example, beetroot makes a nice red colour. Adding extra colour during the kneading process will help – wear gloves though so you don’t end up with it all over your hands! You can purchase natural food colours online.
• Want to add some bling and colour? You can get creative with your playdough mix and add in glitter, coloured rice, small love heart cutouts or other shapes that you can buy from party or craft stores.
• When you’re not using the playdough, place it in the fridge. If you find it gets sticky at any point, you can just add more flour.
• See also our no cook playdough recipe.