I have revolutionized play dough making in our house!
We have tried out a lot of play dough recipes. Some recipes lived up to their hype, and others did not. This method, however, is even better than I anticipated. I needed a large quantity of play dough for K’s kindergarten Christmas gifts for her class. I purchased clear plastic ornaments from Oriental Trading last month and had them ready to fill. My plan was to make white play dough (no coloring needed!), and then draw a snowman face on the clear ornaments.
First, why do we make play dough in our house when we can buy it so conveniently and inexpensively? A few reasons…
Number 1: it’s fun to make. The making process is a fun project in itself. Then after it’s made, more fun!
Number 2: if it’s a good recipe, it’s better homemade than store bought (like most things).
Number 3: you can add your own scent, color or glitter to your homemade play dough.
So, over the last few years, we have had some favorite recipes and made play dough many times. One of the least favorite parts, for me, was stirring the hot dough when the liquid ingredients meet the dry ingredients. Particularly if you are making a large quantity of dough, the stirring can be quite hard. As the dough forms, it just gets harder. So if my strong hubby was not at home or available, there were many times I avoided this otherwise fun project with my girls.
Well, today I am proud to say that I made a 5x batch of play dough all by myself! Well, me and my trusty Kitchenaid mixer, that is. I thought as I was looking for a new play dough recipe, "what if I poured all of the ingredients into my Kitchenmaid mixer, and let it do the mixing?" Using this Peppermint Play Dough recipe from theidearoom.net, which is awesome in itself, I made a BIG batch of play dough. The mixer method worked beautifully! I was so happy that I could let my mixer do all the hard work. (I used the regular mixing attachment.) I loved the fact that this recipe is peppermint scented, and I loved the consistency of the final product. Just as the article stated, it truly was not sticky and was a great consistency for playing. I believe this is due to the large amount of cream of tartar used. Other recipes use a fraction of this amount. The list of ingredients below is for a double batch of the original found in the article. 1 cup of flour (as listed in the article) does not make a very big amount.
Here is how I modified the recipe to work in my Kitchenaid stand mixer.
Pour all dry ingredients in mixing bowl:
2 cups flour
½ cup salt
4 Tablespoons cream of tartar (yes, that is correct….4 Tablespoons)
Pour all wet ingredients into pan.
2 cups water
2 Tablespoons vegetable oil
2 Tablespoons peppermint oil extract
Boil liquid ingredients, and then pour over dry ingredients in mixer. Turn mixer on low. As dough forms, pour in glitter as desired. Turn mixer off; scrape the sides and mixer blade. Turn it back on low, mix for a bit and repeat until dough is fully mixed.
I don’t know if kneading was necessary at this point, but I still pulled the dough out and kneaded it for a bit on the counter. Then I let it cool and bagged it up until I was ready to package it in the ornaments.
I did not attempt to make more than a triple batch using my mixer....I did 1 double batch + 1 triple batch to get the amount I needed for all 12 kindergarteners (with a little leftover). Any more than triple may be hard to mix together, depending on your mixer size. I'd love to hear how it goes if you try making play dough!
