And There's Glitter on the Floor: Snowflake Playdough

Yea, yea, yea.  We know it's been in the 60s in D.C. this week, but we've decided it's winter and we wanted to make snowflake playdough for momma's duty day at my preschool this week.  We worked off of this no-cook recipe (which we used to make pumpkin playdough at school before), but added blue food coloring, peppermint extract, and lots and lots of glitter.  Oh and we added a little bit of baby oil since we had such good luck adding that to our last cooked batch.  This no-cook one did not turn out nearly as well as the last (and far from the soft goodness of the cooked one we regularly use).  It's always too watery and it's hard to add the right amount of extra flour with a table full of "patient" toddlers waiting for their play dough.  But we all still had fun and got some good motor skillz out of it -- we all helped measure the ingredients, mom added the hot water and mixed it up, and then we each got a little batch to mix the food coloring, etc. into.  Never able to just let things lie, momma mixed up a batch of the cooked dough at home later that afternoon and we dyed it with our Wilton's (blue and lavender -- a much better color) and got to use our new pastry cutting kits momma bought us from IKEA (I'm REALLY into being a chef right now).  I spent at least 45 minutes playing with my new pastry kit and ice cream playdough machine.  We all heart playdough in our house.  And we love the recipe mentioned above so much, we'll list it here for quick reference (this makes a big batch):

- 4 cups water
- 4 cups flour
- 1 cup salt
- 2 tablespoons cooking oil
- 4 teaspoons cream of tartar
- food coloring (we found that it helps mixing in the food coloring with the water first -- especially if you use gel food coloring)

Combine ingredients and cook over medium heat, stirring constantly until most of the moisture is absorbed (it will take a bit).  Let it cool on some wax paper and add any extract or scent if you want.  You can add the food coloring at this point, too.  It's just a bit harder to mix in - but gives the kiddos a good workout.  I like to mix in a bit of baby oil to get a good, soft texture.  Store in airtight container.

Cam singing happy birthday with her "birthday cake."