Homemade Kool-Aid Playdoh Recipe

Anyone that has ever been a preschool teacher can tell you the recipe for homemade play doh from heart. Every christmas that I taught preschool, which was for years, I made a huge batch of playdoh, divided it up so that every child would get some and added a few alphabet cookie cutters to make the perfect affordable gift for a preschooler. Now I just make it for my own kids.

Not that long ago I introduced you to coconut oil play doh but this week our local store had Kool-aid on sale so we went a slightly different route today in our play-doh making adventures.

Kool-aid is a great additive for two reasons. 1) It’s an easy way to add color without having to deal with messy food coloring. 2) It also adds a little bit of scent.

If you’ve never made homemade play-doh before you are going to kick yourself when you see how easy it is.

The recipe is very simple. I remember it by using the largest qualities of ingredients first and then go down to the smallest.

Kool-aid Play-doh

1 cup flour

1 cup water

1/2 cup salt

2 tablespoons oil (any oil will work)

1 tablespoon cream of tartar

1 packet of Kool-aide

To begin I add all the dry ingredients (flour, salt, cream of tartar and Kool-aid) to a pan on the cool stove top.  Then use a whisk to stir it all together so that all the clumps will be broken up. And if your kids have stolen your good whisk then it’s ok to use their itty bitty play one, we won’t tell.

Fill the measuring cup up with 1 cup of water and to that add 2 tablespoons of oil. You don’t have to mix it, just add it and get ready to pour.

Turn on the stove top to medium and slowly add the water/ oil mix while stirring. I let my oldest two help with the entire process until it starts getting really hot and harder to stir. This is a great learning process for them in measurement and also by showing them how it will change from liquid to solid quickly. Just be carefully because this does get very hot.

Another great thing about playdoh is that if you get the color changing ones that start out clear the kids will really oohh and awww when you add in the water and the color starts to appear.

As the heat starts to warm up the ingredients it will quickly thicken.

Just don’t stop stirring! It will thicken very quickly and get very hot. When it looks like the bottom picture, pull it off the heat but keep stirring.

Stir until it forms a loose ball. Don’t cook it until you get it the consistency you want it because it hardens a little more as it cools. You want it to be very soft.

Turn it out onto a plate or cutting board and let it cool for several minutes. The outside may appear cool but the inside will still be smoldering hot. Make sure you test the temperature of the middle before handling it.

When it’s cool enough to touch (5 minutes) then you want to knead it for a few seconds to make sure it is well mixed.

Now it should be ready and good to go! Put it on the table along with some cookie cutters and miscellaneous kitchen items and let the kids go to town.

We made three different batches all with different Kool-aide flavors. The green one is lemon lime. It has a great color and limey smell. The middle one is orange which is my least favorite because I hate orange scents and this scent is the most powerful. Finally we got the blue color by using Blue Rasberry Lemonade. This one smells great and the color is very soothing.

Are you going to try it out? What flavors of Kool-aide will you be using?