Play Clay

Watching the boys play with twelve different colors of Play Doh the other day got me thinking.  What type of hippie parent AM I if I can't manage to make this stuff from scratch? went the thought.  And yes, it was closely followed by both don't eat that! and if you mix all those colors together you're not going to like...oh well. 


I tried to make play clay (or salt dough, or whatever you want to call it - it's not REALLY Play Doh if it doesn't have that smell, you know) once for Trevor when he was about Jake's age.  It didn't go so well - first it was too sticky and then about five minutes later it was too dry and we ended up throwing it out.  But I'm older and wiser now, am I not...?  Plus, it was raining today and there was really nothing else to do.

Ingredients:

• 2 cups flour.  Yes, that white whole wheat flour that's been sitting in a ziplock bag in the cabinet since you bought it six months ago thinking you could use it for pancakes and your family would never even notice the difference will work just fine, which is a nice bonus to making play clay.
• 2 cups warm water
• 1 cup salt
• 2 Tbsp vegetable oil (canola is fine, or whatever you have in the house)
• 1 Tbsp cream of tartar (don't leave it out, otherwise first it'll be too sticky and then about five minutes later it'll be too dry.  Hello, a-ha moment.)
• Some type of colors (more on this in a minute)
• A couple drops of essential oil or tea tree oil (it won't make it smell like Play Doh, but it'll cut the white whole wheat flour smell a bit and make it more interesting.  Plus, both the baby and the dog may be less likely to taste it if it smells like tea tree.  A bite or two won't hurt either of them, but it does apparently have enough salt in it that it can cause the dog some problems if she eats too much of it.)

Easy cleanup with this - you can mix it together right in the pot.  A large saucepan works well - the big bottom surface area makes it get done faster and more evenly.  Mix together the flour, water, salt, oil, and cream of tartar over low heat.  It will look like library paste.  Stir it with a wooden spoon and after a few minutes it will start to clump together.  Keep stirring until it's totally pulled away from the sides of the pot (5-7 minutes or so) and when you press your finger into it, your finger comes away clean.  Take it off the heat and dump it onto a clean counter top.  Split it into two, three, or four balls, depending on how many colors you want.

Jake wanted pink and orange this afternoon.  I had natural colors and paprika and pomegranate juice in the house, so I figured this might be possible.  It wasn't - we ended up with one ball of sort of grayish blueish purple and one ball of sort of goldish mustardy yellow.  Even if you don't ever cook with them, buy a set of conventional colors for the play clay - your toddler will love how bright they are and your 3rd grader won't roll his eyes at his weird hippie mom who's SO uptight about artificial colors that she won't even put them in PLAY DOH, for Pete's sake.  Put a few drops of each color in the middle of each ball and knead it on the counter until it's smooth and the color is distributed evenly.  Add a couple drops of tea tree or other oil, if you like.

This will keep nicely in ziplock bags, but not for a terribly long time.  Which is okay, since half the fun is making the stuff anyway.  And you do have that whole bag of white whole wheat flour to use up...