I hope you're ok with the change in schedule for these posts, it will only be whilst I'm on holiday (which I am currently in the car on the way, woo!). There will be posts up on the 4th, 8th and 13th, after this one. I get back on the 13th and then there will be a post up on the 15th and the normal schedule will resume. I hope you like the posts that will be going up, I was going to try and post every 3 days, but that was just too much for me to do in such a short space of time. I will be scheduling them this week to go up on the dates above, which may mean that there won't be any tweets about them when they actually go up, I will try to, but I haven't yet figured out how to get the links to posts before I actually post them. I think I will probably end up just putting a link to the home page where you can find the post. Anyway, let's move onto the actual post now...
When I was younger I absolutely loved playing with playdough (like most kids out there I guess)! My favourite thing was to make 'food' from it and run my own little restaurant. I would even make little menus for my family and take their order! I have so many photos of me playing with it, and creating little people. The only problem I had was that I used to forget to put it away a lot so it would end up going hard pretty quickly, and I just used to end up with a brown blob after a couple of times playing. My mum decided she was going to start making her own, to save having to try and buy it all the time for me, it meant I could play with it any time, rather than just whenever we managed to find somewhere that sold it.
I think she just did a google search for it, but it may have come from a specific book or something. I'm not 100% sure as it kind of surfaced around 11, maybe 12 years ago, and I can't remember that far back.
I know the measurements are in cups, so if you're not used to working in cups, then when measuring out all the ingredients, make sure the cup you use is the same for all of them, so this will ensure that they are all in proportion to each other. you will need: 2 cups of plain flour, 1 cup of salt, 2 cups of water, 2 tablespoons of sunflower oil and 2 teaspoons of cream of tartar (this is optional, it just helps with the elasticity of the dough). You can also add a few drops of whatever food colouring you want, or separate the batch after it has formed dough and create different colours.
When my mum was making it, she would mix the salt and water in a pan over a low heat, then add the cream of tartar, food colouring and sunflower oil and mixing it all together before adding the flour. I think this just made it easier to mix together before it became a ball of dough (this should only take a couple of minutes). She would then wrap it in clingfilm and leave it in the fridge for a few hours to make sure it was cool enough to play with. If we were being particularly impatient she would put it into the freezer to cool it down quicker. However, you do have to be careful not to let it freeze or else you will have to wait for it to thaw out again.
This recipe might come in handy if you have kids yourself, and need to try and keep them entertained during the summer holidays, or if you just really want some playdough to play with but don't want to buy some. Just remember, it isn't edible, so keep it away from pets and ensure children don't eat it as the large amounts of salt may cause imbalances in the body.
I hope you all have fun if you try this out!
Love you all
x
