Homemade Playdough Recipe with Large and Small Batch Options

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My family meets with a group of friends from church every Tuesday night. We have quite the group of boisterous preschoolers to entertain each week and I volunteered to make some playdough to keep them busy. Keep in mind, I’ve never made homemade playdough.

So I struck out to the world wide web and realized quickly that not only were there a million and one recipes, I didn’t seem to have all of the ingredients necessary for any of them. I certainly didn’t have cream of tartar (although my mom does have a holiday cookies recipe that requires it so I now have it on hand). I also learned that it can be spelled: play dough, playdough, play-doh and the list goes on. I picked one and ran with it.

I found some ideas from several recipes and then took to work trying to make something with only 1/4 cup of salt (yes, I emptied all of my salt shakers to come up with this upon realized we were out). Needless to say we were off to a rocky start but I did find the perfect sized recipe for two kids (my nephew was on his way over) and then expanded it times four for a large group. I’ll include both homemade playdough versions below!

Playdough Small Batch Ingredients:

• 1 cup flour
• 1/4 cup salt
• 3 teaspoons lemon juice*
• 3 tablespoons oil
• 1/2 cup water
• food coloring (2-3 drops or to preference)

Mix ingredients into pan and heat slowly at a low temperature until appropriate texture. Let cool. Play!

Playdough Large Batch Ingredients:

• 4 cups flour
• 1 cup salt
• 1/4 cup lemon juice*
• 3/4 cup oil
• 2 cups water
• food coloring (4-5 drops or to preference)

Mix ingredients into pan and heat slowly at a low temperature until appropriate texture. Let cool. Play!

We also used this same recipe during our fun Mo Willems Pigeon Party!

*Several recipes said that you can replace lemon juice with vinegar