Scented Play-dough

The other day I had the good fortune of spending time with a close friend and her sweet little girl.  While her mom and I chatted over coffee she spent time going through my Play-Doh collection.  The boys don't play with it very often anymore, and it had mostly dried up and crystalized (I had never seen play-doh do that before).  I made a comment that the next time she came to play we would make our very own play-dough, so I thought I had better test a recipe before that time came.

Each of the boys has been assigned a color for years.  SugarBear is blue, LoveBug is orange, HoneyBunny is red, and JellyBean is yellow.  I thought it only made sense to make play-dough in their colors (SugarBear is a bit beyond that stage) and then we added a scent.  I've never been a fan of the scent of commercial Play-Doh, so I think I was most motivated to make my own by the desire to scent them.  I used scents that I already had on hand from making soaps and lotions, so there wasn't any additional purchasing necessary.  Thus, the red ended up being peppermint, the yellow is lemongrass and the orange is sweet orange.

This is the recipe that I used:

HomemadePlay-dough Recipe

1 cup flour

1 cup water

1/3 cup salt ( yes--it uses lots of salt)

2 TEASPOON cream of tarter

1 TABLESPOON vegetable oil

food coloring

essential / fragrance oil

The kitchen smelled great while I was making the three batches and their hands smell great after they play with it.  

Here is a quick tip:  I used my stand mixer to get the colors throughly mixed.