Homemade Playdough Recipe & Notes

There are tons of homemade playdough recipes out there and so really all I'm doing here is adding to the pile. :) But, I can tell you that I've tried quite a few of those recipes and the one I've detailed below is my absolute fav.

*I give full credit to My Montessori Journey for this recipe. I've decided to replicate it here because I have a few "notes from the trenches" to add to it.*

Homemade Playdough Recipe
Ingredients:
1 cup Flour
1/2 cup Salt
1 tablespoon Cream of Tartar
1 tablespoon Cooking Oil
1 cup Water

Directions:
1. In a medium sized bowl, combine all dry ingredients and mix well. Add wet ingredients to bowl and, again, mix well.

2. Add contents to a large pan and cook over medium-low heat, stirring constantly until it forms a ball.

3. The dough is ready when the mixture pulls away from the pan and when the wet parts begin to look dry.

4. Turn the dough onto your countertop and knead it until smooth. It will be quite warm to the touch, so be careful!

5. Add food coloring, glitter, extracts, etc. AFTER the dough has cooled. The color and scents won't "take" as well when the dough is hot/very warm.


Notes from the trenches:
Re the ingredients, I use an off-brand of salt - it's cheaper and let's face it, when you're using a 1/2 cup each time, you don't want to/need to be using high quality stuff. A lot of people aren't sure what Cream of Tartar is - it's a white powder, very common, found along with all the other spices in your grocery store. UPDATE: A reader wrote in with the tip that lemon juice could replace Cream of Tartar in the event you don't have it on hand.

I like to use gel food coloring, such as this kind, because I find it comes in a wide variety of "unusual" colors (e.g. black, navy blue, hot pink) and a little goes a long way. The everyday McCormick brand is good too.

When it comes to storing the dough, I find it best to keep it in a Ziploc container or bag in the refrigerator. In this way it'll last months. I know some folks keep theirs out at room temp and it maintains its original state perfectly fine. I'm assuming it's because of Bermuda's constant humidity that mine turns to goo after a few hours of sitting out.

It's time to toss the dough out when it starts to look dry and crusty or when it gets very sticky and gooey. What you want it a nice, smooth, elastic consistency.

If you choose to add glitter, please note you'll need A LOT of it. This is a situation where a lot of glitter goes only a little way.

UPDATED: Imagination Tree shared the tip that a few drops of glycerin (which can be purchased at a craft or cooking store) makes the dough wonderfully stretchy and smooth.

I make a new batch of playdough each month. You can click the links below to go to the actual posts to see how we used the dough. You can also view a slideshow of our dough here on my Counting Coconuts Facebook page.

Our Playdough Themes
January: Space
January: Snow
February: Chocolate - two links: here and here.
March: St. Patrick's Day and Easter eggs
March: Weather
April: Rainbow
May: Gardening
May: Robot
July: Independence Day
July: Beach
August: Ice cream
September: Apple pie
October: Halloween - two links: here and here.
November: Turkeys
December: Christmas - two links: here and here.

Happy dough making!

~Thank you for your comments!~