Your Dough is My Dough: Frozen Playdough

We realized recently that the last time we made playdough was for St. Paddy's Day! How sad is that!? It makes mom feel like we're getting so old -- we used to make several different batches a week. In any event, we listed some new and creative playdough on our bucket list and when we spotted some recipes for frozen play dough on Pinterest, we knew we had to try it.

And we loved Growing A Jeweled Rose's idea of turning it into ice cream! Such a great way to cool off in the summer. We highly suggest playing with it outside. In bathing suits. Near a hose to spray everything and everyone down after! To make ours, you'll need:

- shaving cream (we used almost 2 cans to make 7 colors);
- gel food coloring (it blends easily without making the shaving cream melt);
- baking extracts (we used vanilla, almond, orange, and peppermint);
- containers;
- ice cream accessories (we used scoops, real toppings, and ice cream cones); and
- freezer space (for a few hours at least).

Let the kiddos spray the shaving cream into containers. Mix in a few drops of food coloring and extracts (FYI, we found that the extracts gave a little scent, but it still smelled like shaving cream!). Put the mixed cream into the freezer for at least a few hours. Once frozen, set up a little ice cream shop and go to town!

Your Dough is My Dough: Halloween Playdough

Much like stores have already started stocking Christmas decorations, we've been all over mom to get Halloween decorations for months now. She promised that as soon as our house wasn't all done up like a knight's castle, we could get started. But we kept after her. So she came up with some Halloween playdough -- we'd get some spooky playtime without having to hang it all over the house. We did convince her to purchase a few Halloweeny items ahead of time, though, so we were able to use those while we played. Cam made scary cookies and I made Frankenstein gingerbread men, complete with fuzzy hair (pipecleaners) and neck electrodes (beads). We filled little cauldrons with yucky, sticky frogs and snakes. And we loved the pumpkin pie smell of the dough, too.

Here's how to make our Halloween dough:

Ingredients:

- 4 cups flour

- 4 cups water

- 1 cup salt

- 2 tablespoons cooking oil

- 4 teaspoons cream of tartar

- 1 tablespoon pumpkin pie spice

- orange and black food coloring

- gold glitter (you don't have to use glitter, but mom embraces Halloween as another excuse to use the sparkly stuff)

Directions:

Combine ingredients through pumpkin pie spice 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. Divide the batch into halves -- color one half orange and the other black. Work in a healthy dose of glitter -- don't worry, the dough will hold it and keep it from sparkling your entire house. Play!

Your Dough is My Dough: Apple Pie Playdough

It's almost holiday baking season, people. And in our house that means the season where mom attempts to replicate holiday baking smells whilst making holiday playdough to avoid the calories associated with eating baked goods (and, let's be honest, to avoid the actual act of baking). Plus, playdough takes much less time to make and consumes much more of our time -- we'll play with playdough for hours. Cam and I both decided that we like apples this year and asked mom if we could make an apple pie. We got apple pie playdough instead. Not exactly what we were looking for, but we'll take it.

We colored 1/2 our batch red for the apples and left 1/2 plain colored to serve as the dough. Mini ramekins and real cinnamon sticks rounded out our usual playdough tools. Cam and I cooked up some awesome pies (and apple pie ice cream, apple pie lollipops, etc.) and the whole house smelled delish. You can check out some of our other yummy playdough recipes on our "Your Dough is My Dough" page, including the fall appropriate Pumpkin Pie Playdough (check out those pics of Cam -- can you believe how little she looks!?!?).

Apple Pie Playdough

Ingredients:

- 4 cups flour

- 4 cups water

- 1 cup salt

- 2 tablespoons cooking oil

- 4 teaspoons cream of tartar

- 1 1/2 teaspoons nutmeg

- 1 1/2 teaspoons allspice

- 2 teaspoons cinnamon 

- red food coloring 

- cinnamon sticks 

Directions:

Combine ingredients through cinnamon 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. Divide the batch into halves and work some red food coloring into one-half of it. Now make some pies. 

Your Dough is My Dough: Oatmeal Playdough

Oatmeal is one of our breakfast staples -- especially when the weather is chilly. But we are big fans of the fruit & cream variety (we love to "pick" our own flavor each time) and not the old school plain oats. So when mom recently made us black bean and quinoa veggie burgers (quick tangent -- this was a big mistake, mom. yes, some of our favorite items are separately black beans, corn, quinoa and oats. but you put all that mess together and call it a burger? what are you, new? that's great that you and dad loved it, because there were a lot of leftovers), we had a giant container of Quaker Oats quick oats left crowding up our pantry and we started scheming.

We first decided to have a spa day and make oatmeal masks. Then mom came to her senses and realized that we both flip out when she washes our hair and gets even a drop of water on our face. So washing off an oatmeal mask might not work out so well. A few quick googles later and we settled on oatmeal playdough. It took a bit of tinkering, but we thought the following recipe came out best: 

- 1 1/2 cups flour

- 2 cups quick oats

- 1 cup warm water

Mix all ingredients together in a large bowl with hands until dough forms (we keep our flour in the freezer and got a kick out of mixing the cold flour and warm water together). If the dough is still too sticky for you, add some more flour until you get a nice, workable texture.

This turned out a super cool, yummy smelling, textured dough that even gave us a nice hand treatment while we played. Mom and Cam worked on an oatmeal zoo and I asked for wax paper to make oatmeal saltwater taffy. Not sure how long this will last for, we put it in the fridge and figure we'll get at least one more play out of it.