Fall Playdough Recipe

These fall playdough recipes capture all the best aromas of fall.  Our easy, no fail playdough recipe is simple to make and lasts for months.

Fall Recipe for Play - Playdough

Can you believe it is almost fall?  I'm not sure I'm ready to say goodbye to summer.  Thankfully I have many favorite fall activities for kids.  As I mentioned in my fall sticky paints post I am doing my best to embrace my favorite things about fall.  What better way to get excited about fall than to kick off a fall play series?  I am so excited to be teaming up with the creative minds behind Fun at Home with Kids, Blog Me Mom, and Housing a Forest to bring you Fall Recipes for Play.  This week each of us will be posting a new fall recipe for play with a theme for each day:  Monday - Playdough, Tuesday - Paint, Wednesday - Glowing, Thursday - Scented Play, and Friday - Nature.  Be sure and stop by each day to see the new play recipes each of us have planned.  I hope this fall play series gets you as excited for the change of seasons as I now am.

The theme for today is playdough.  I love making our playdough.  It's inexpensive and super easy to customize.  Plus, even when left unscented, homemade playdough smells so much better than store bought playdough.  Last spring I discovered the secret to making the perfect playdough.  Seriously, this recipe is fail proof.  While I do measure the ingredients as I go, I have found that I can err quite a bit without messing up the recipe.

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Ingredients for the base recipe:

• 1 cup flour
• 1/4 cup salt
• 1 teaspoon cream of tartar
• 1 tablespoon vegetable oil
• 3/4 cup boiling water

Ingredients for fall scents and colors:

• cinnamon
• nutmeg
• pumpkin pie spice
• clove
• apple flavor
• Liquid Watercolors in orange, green, red, yellow and brown

Directions: Heat the water to a boil. I use a tea kettle. You could also microwave it. While the water is heating add the dry ingredients to the Kitchen Aid. That's my secret to making perfect playdough. I don't do anything fancy. I just add the ingredients to the mixer, and the Kitchen Aid does its magic! The playdough turns out perfect every single time.

Next add the vegetable oil. Once the water boils, at it to the mixer. I made five batches of this recipe and added the colors and spices directly into the Kitchen Aid at the same time that I added the water. It didn't make a difference if I added the color and spice before or after the water. All of the batches turned out just right. Let the playdough mix on a low speed until it reaches the desired consistency.

If you don't have a Kitchen Aid, you can still make these wonderful playdoughs. Mix the dry ingredients in a bowl, add the oil, add the color and spice, then add the hot water. Mix with a wooden spoon until the dough is cool enough to knead by hand. Knead for a few minutes until a dough is formed.

I ended up with orange pumpkin pie, candy apple green, clove red, nutmeg yellow and cinnamon brown.  All of them are wonderful.  We made them weeks ago, and my four boys have asked to play with our fall playdough just about every day.  My personal favorite is the cinnamon.  Cinnamon smells so incredible!  Store playdough in an airtight container, and it should keep for many months.

Be sure and visit these other fantastic sites to see their playdough recipes, and come back each day this week for more fall recipes for play!

Pumpkin Spice Salt Dough for Ornaments from Fun at Home with Kids

Apple Dough Recipe from Blog Me Mom

Pumpkin Spice Marshmallow Dough from Housing a Forest

For more summer fun recipes for play follow me on Pinterest.

More fall recipes for play:

Apple Pie Dough ~ Fall Finger Paints ~ Apple Printing with Sidewalk Chalk Paint