Plant-dyed play dough

Homemade play dough doesn’t need much of an introduction, except to say this is the simplest, quickest, easiest recipe for making and dyeing dough naturally. To dye dough, we like to knead edible plant-based powders into it, starting with a small quantity and adding more until we achieve the colors and shades we want.

For powders, I use whatever I can find in my spice drawer, tea box, or dye cabinet, my favorites being beet root, turmeric, rose, matcha, wheatgrass, paprika, spinach, and spirulina. I’m sure other powders could work too, so long as they’re food-grade and safe for children. If you have leftovers and aren’t sure what to do with them, try using them to dye Easter eggs or play silks like these!

There are certainly other ways to dye playdough (even by using food scraps to dye the water you mix with the flour), but using dried powders is by far the cleanest, most straightforward way I’ve found. Hope you enjoy!

Ingredients

Pink: beet powder or rose powder

Dark green: spirulina powder

Light green: wheatgrass powder, matcha powder, or spinach powder

Orange: paprika

Yellow: turmeric powder

Playdough

2 cups all-purpose flour

1/2 cup fine table salt

2 tbsp cream of tartar

2 tbsp vegetable oil

1 1/4 cups boiling water

Materials

kraft paper

medium-size bowl

wooden spoon

mason jars (one for each color)

Instructions

1. Cover your work surface with Kraft paper.

2. In a medium size bowl, combine and mix the flour, salt, and cream of tartar.

3. Make a well in the center of the dry ingredients and add the vegetable oil and boiling water.

4. Using a wooden spoon, mix the ingredients until a dough forms. If the dough is too dry after adding all the water, add a little more (not too much) until it has the texture of play dough. If you add too much water, and the dough feels wet, just add a bit more flour.

5. Transfer the dough onto a clean work surface and knead it with your hands (it should have cooled down by now) until the dough is smooth and uniform in texture.

6. Divide dough into 3 or 4 balls (however many colors you want to make), then flatten each ball into a round disk. Place 1 tsp of one type of powder in the center of each disk.

7. Knead the dough until the color is completely incorporated. If it’s not as dark as you’d like it to be, flatten it again, add more powder, and continue to knead. Repeat until you’re satisfied with the color.

8. Roll the dough into a ball and store it in an airtight mason jar until you’re ready to play with it! Store at room temperature.

Tip

A fun thing to put together with young children is a play dough sculpting kit. You can do it for free by collecting materials you already own or for pennies by scavenging supplies at a secondhand shop. I like to start with a cute little basket, line it with cloth, and then fill it with any tool that looks like it could be used with clay. Cookie cutters, rolling pins, forks, butter knives, small (blunt) pizza cutters, child-sized scissors, etc, all make great sculpting tools and can usually be found in droves in the kitchen section of a thrift store. If you want to think a bit outside the box, you can add items like matchbox cars, metal straws, rubber stamps, seashells, acorns, sticks, and honey dippers - really anything that could make an interesting impression in dough!

You can also add a drop of lavender essential oils to make kneading the dough both a proprioceptive and therapeutic experience. I used to pull play dough out whenever my children were getting a little too wild indoors and it always helped to calm them down in lightning speed!