I’ve made a lot of play dough in my time. Enough to have memorized my favorite recipe. It makes a good size ball and stores neatly in anything with a tight lid that can hold two cups.

If you do this with little people, make sure you trust them with the stove. The stove is not on in this picture.

Our Best Play Dough
Dump the following into a sauce pan and mix well:

1 c. all purpose flour
1 c. water
1/4 c. salt (table, no need to be fancy)
1 T. oil
2 T. cream of tartar
food coloring to suit taste

Put your pan over medium heat. The goop will look nice and smooth like this…

…if you’ve used neon green food coloring.

Start stirring. Right about the time you think your arm will fall off (5-10 minutes), this will happen:

It will start to pull away from the sides of the pan and clump together.

Keep cooking and stirring until the mess has barely stopped being shiny and then pull it off of the heat. I also dump it out of the pot so it will stop cooking and not get too hard. Give it a few minutes to rest. When it’s cool enough to touch, knead the play dough until it’s smooth. I find that kneading is easier while it is still warm.

Wash your pot and repeat until you’ve run out of colors or storage boxes. Or in our case, both.

All this took us less than an hour to mix up.

In an airtight container, it keeps far longer than you’d think. We’ll be playing with this batch well into March. Unless it all gets mixed into a muddy rainbow. Then we’ll have to make more.