No cook vanilla scented purple glitter playdough

If like me you sometimes get the playdough out and find it's gone a bit hard or you fancy making the world of playdough a bit more exciting you can try and make your own. Whilst I can't pretend I enjoy the messy side of baking and being crafty with a baby/toddler/prechooler, I do love being creative and finding new things for G to discover and do. (You know you're a mum when you find yourself unintentionally quoting CBeebies)!

There are loads of simple recipes out there on the web but like my salt dough recipe I thought I'd do this one in grams. I'm always a bit frustrated at having to convert to grams, ml's if I follow one on the internet with not having cup measure's for the kitchen. The amounts never turn out quite right and I end up with the dough being too wet. One day I'll remember to get myself a set when I actually have some spare pennies!


Recipe:

• 250g plain flour
• 1 tsp glycerin*
• 1 tbsp oil
• 300g Salt
• 200 ml boiling water
• 1 tbsp cream of tartar
• Glitter*
• Vanilla essence*
• Sugarflair Gel Colour of choice*

* These are optional ingredients and can be varied.

1. We mixed the dry ingredients in a large mixing bowl. 
2. We then added our chosen colour of glitter to the mix.
3. We then added the oil and the vanilla essence.
4. After that I took over from my little girl. I added a small amount of gel colour to the hot water and mixed until dispersed. I then added the hot water to the dry ingredients, stirring in bit by bit.
5. I then with careful supervision let my little girl start stirring again when the dough had begun to form. We then added the glycerin. 

If your playdough seems a bit wet/too sticky just add more flour until you feel it's right.
You can choose to add the gel colours afterwards and kneed them into the dough. This makes it much easier if you want to make multiple colours of dough.

What is great about making your own dough is that you can vary the additions to it to suit you.
I add glycerin now when I make dough after reading a great tip online about it making the dough shiny. We added glitter as we love glitter! My little girl chose which gel to use and we used vanilla as that's what we had in. It would have been nice to do a lavender scented one this time to match the colour she chose. You could use almond, lemon, rose, orange, lavender, herbs, spices, the list goes on.

There are many ways to play with dough. We usually use a big box of cutters, some playdoh tools and mummy's silicone cupcake cases. This time we got out some candles and other bits for a different sensory experience. G loved sticking things in the dough instead of rolling out and cutting or rolling into balls.

I've heard of people making dough using conditioner or bubble bath. We've got some cornflour in now so that will most likely feature in our next messy kitchen experience!