Fun With Cornstarch Play Dough!

Margaret have some fun with the play-dough!

John took the children out to play with the homemade play-dough first thing in the morning.  The children had a BIG time!  They played for about an hour.  Mostly they are into destruction so they had fun crumbling up the play-dough.  John said when he took the play-dough out of the bag the consistency was strange.  He said it was rather dry and crumbly.  I thought it was a little wet when I placed it in the bag last night so I was surprised to hear that.

Next time I will try a different recipe and see how it goes.  I don't think this is a "good" play-dough recipe but it does have some really good advantages. I think the play-dough needs to be played with the same day it is made.  Another upside is the recipe is gluten free.  We are not a gluten-free family but I know others who are and they cannot play with "regular" play-dough because of the gluten.  Finally, the recipe only has two ingredients and they are pretty cheap.  

Homemade Cornstarch Play-Dough

In an effort to be a "good" mother I thought I would make homemade play-dough.  What was I thinking?  LOL   Really, it was fun.  As is typical for me... I had NO idea what I was doing.  All I know is that play-dough costs a lot of money and with three kids you can go through a LOT of play-dough.  I spent a ton of time combing through Pinterest to find play-dough recipes.

After going through several recipes I decided that I would try a simple recipe first.  It is a quick two ingredient play-dough recipe.  Are you ready?  It's so short you will miss it if you are not paying attention!  Ready???

1 Part Cheap Hair Conditioner
2 Parts Cornstarch

I pulled this recipe from a site from Pinterest.

Since I had NO idea what I was doing I thought I would pull the ingredients together.  I had some cheap coconut conditioner.  I had a HUGE tub of cornstarch from Smart&Final.  I also had several types of food colors.  I thought I could color the dough.  The variety of food color allowed me to try and see if there is any difference.  I also had some Pumpkin Spice essential oil.  I thought it might be a nice sensory addition to the dough.

R: Cornstarch and Conditioner in the bowl
L: This is the dough after mixing

 I put all the ingredients in the bowl.  I stirred and the mixture seemed to come out dry.  I still had no idea what I was doing.  I got a small stainless steel bowl out and started to play with a quarter of the dough.  I started to work and knead with dough.  I added in the pumpkin spice essential oil and some food coloring.  I kneaded the dough. As I kneaded the dough it started to come together.  In the end it looked nice.  If the mix was too dry and did not coming together I added one drop of conditioner at a time.  If you make it too wet and it's sticky then I took a pinch of cornstarch to add to the mix to stiffen it.

Dough after kneading and adding green food color.

There are a couple of warnings I want to throw out at this time...

1.  Make sure you learn from my mistake! If you are going to knead in food color make sure you wear gloves!  My hand is now a technicolor rainbow!

Oops!  Should have worn gloves!

2.  Be careful with cornstarch!  It is light weight and easily flies around EVERYWHERE!  John said it looked like a cornstarch bomb went off in the kitchen!  I swear, I was trying to be careful!  Just be forewarned!

Kitchen after making the play-dough.  Notice the cornstarch everywhere!

Have fun with the recipe!  It is easy.  I plan on trying another play-dough recipe later.  I will post pictures when I do!

Going gluten free?

While I was pregnant with the babies I lost about 40 pounds. Over the last three and a half years I have gained all the weight back. I am now tying to go on a diet. I have not decided on a specific diet yet but I do want to try and get rid of the gluten in my diet. Anyone have any recipe ideas for GF casserole ideas?