Homemade Play Dough

My sister is the leader on this little project but I thought I would take pictures and feature it on here.
She has been staying with us for a while now with their transition to move back to Houston, so we have had a house full of toddlers. We decided today that it would be fun to make our own play dough. I ran out of the store bought stuff since they let it sit out a few days ago and it all dried up. That stuff was never that great anyways, since it dries out fast and crumbles all over the place.
She found this recipe a while back and tested it out and really liked it, so that is what we used.
1 cup flour
1/2 cup salt
2 Tablespoons Cream of Tartar
1 Tablespoon oil
1 cup water
food coloring

Mix the first 5 ingredients in a sauce pan and whisk together.

Add food color of your choice and enough to make it as dark as you want.

Cook over medium low heat stirring continuously with a metal spoon until it just starts to come together into a dough ball.

Immediately take it out of the pot and onto a plate. At this point the dough should still be pretty sticky but still able to be picked up into a ball. knead the dough until it forms a smooth ball with the consistency of normal play dough.

Put it into a tupperware with the lid on to cool. I actually put the dough into a tupperware and left the lid off, thinking that the condensation would be bad and needed to cool without the lid, but Emily said that if you leave the lid off it will dry your dough out. You want to keep all of the moisture with in the container!
After it cools, it’s time to play! We made pink and blue (2 batches) but you can obviously do as much as you want and as many colors as you want. I am out of cream of tartar so once I can get some more, I will be making lots of other colors!

The best parts of this play dough is that it doesn’t dry out fast, doesn’t crumble, and the colors do not rub off on their hands!
PS. I love that my breakfast table is perfect for things like this! I don’t have to be paranoid the whole time about them scratching it up and making messes (to a certain extent, of course). I look forward to the day it can be refinished to be beautiful again, but for now, it gets lots of toddler “love” :)