Homemade Play Dough

Play-Doh brand play dough is a classic child favorite, but unfortunately it contains wheat, which does not fly in our wheat-free home.  It's also now made in China, which brings up questions of safety (and all the other issues related to outsourcing our economy).  There are wheat-free, American-made versions out there, but they are quite expensive, and therefore not well-suited to a 2 and 3 year old who like to leave their Doh sitting out on the table for hours at a time, growing rock-hard in the process.  So, instead of buying Play-Doh or Play-Dough we decided to make some wheat-free, organic play dough at home.  As usual, we had some excellent helpers. The recipe below produces white dough, which most recipes do not.  Dan found this recipe on the celiacfamily.com blog, and hopefully they won't mind us sharing it with you:

Gluten-free play dough

• 1 cup rice flour
• 1/2 cup corn starch
• 1/2 cup salt
• 1 T cream of tarter.
• 1 1/2 t cooking oil
• 1 cup water, hot but not boiling
• Food coloring, if desired

Directions:

1. Mix all dry ingredients together in a medium pot.
2. Add the vegetable oil, then the water, and continue to mix until thoroughly combined.
3. Heat the pot on the stove over low heat for about 3 minutes. Stir frequently with a silicone spatula.
4. When the dough starts to pull away from the sides easily, turn out the dough onto parchment paper or a paper plate. Let it cool briefly until you can work it with your hands.
5. Knead food coloring into the dough until you get the color you desire.

Additional Notes:

• Don’t overcook the dough. It shouldn’t need more than five minutes.  If you cook it too long it will fall apart when kneading.
• To add food coloring, make a well in the middle of the ball of dough and drop the food coloring into the well. Close up the well with the outside dough, keeping the food coloring in the middle of the ball. Then, carefully begin kneading it until the color is evenly distributed throughout the dough.
• If needed, adjust the texture with small amounts of water (for dry, crumbly dough) or cornstarch (for sticky dough).
• Makes about 2 cups of play dough, or about 2 baseball-size balls of dough.

Store in tightly sealed plastic bags or containers.
Samuel isn't sure what's going on yet...

...but he likes helping!

Daddy's little helpers:

Evie taste-testing the results.  I don't recommend it as a snack food, but it's perfectly safe!

This is what happens when you use too much food coloring.  The remedy is to grab another one of the white balls and mix it in to distribute the excess coloring.