Homemade Playdough

In honor of the proposal anniversary on Monday, I made a batch of playdough for Molly.  I have been saving a recipe for (many) decades, and bought all the ingredients a few weeks ago.  Here is the recipe:

2 cups of flour

1 cup of salt

1 Tablespoon of cream of tartar

2 Tablespoons of vegetable oil

2 cups of warm water

food coloring (optional)

Put everything in a pot and stir until it is smooth.

Put the pot over low heat, and stir constantly.  Within about 10 minutes, the mixture will start to thicken, and soon will form a lumpy ball in the middle of the pan.  Test for stickiness.  If it's too sticky, you need to cook it longer.

Let it cool, then knead it until it is smooth and elastic.

Separate into portions and color as you wish.  Put a few drops of food coloring in an indent in the dough, then knead until the color is evenly distributed.  Start with a few drops, then add more if you want a stronger color.

Store in plastic or other air-tight container.

I found on the internet that you can use packages of Koolaid to color the dough, and it leaves the dough smelling nice.  I separated the dough into 8 balls and tried:

Orange - one package gave a nice pumpkin orange color

Lemon-lime - one package gave a bright green color

Cherry - one package gave a dark pink color

Grape - one package gave a very dark, almost black color

Tropical Punch - HALF a package gave a wine-red color

I also used food coloring for the yellow and turquoise.  For the yellow, I needed 12-15 drops, but for the turquoise, I only needed 3 drops of blue, 1 drop of green and 1 drop of yellow.

Molly was quite excited to see the bags of colors, but didn't quite know what to do with it when I put some in front of her.  I showed her how to poke and squeeze it, which made her smile.  I also made a few small marble-size balls which she immediately tried to eat.  NOT recommended!  Although the recipe appears edible, it's very high in salt.  It can also be bad if a pet dog or cat ate any too.

Enjoy!