Simple Edible Play-Dough

Edible Play-Dough!!  Simple, All-Natural, Gluten-Free

Let’s make some Edible Play-Dough!

During our early years of home educating, a friend shared the simple recipe for edible play dough with me. We have made it many times over the years, altered it a bit at times, but the basic simple recipe has remained.

Simple, Natural, 3 Ingredient Edible Play-Dough

I have recently seen plenty of recipes for edible play dough, but few of them use normal, natural, readily available ingredients. I consider NORMAL to be stuff I’d normally buy at Walmart or the grocery story. Not filled with words I can’t pronounce. Not expensive. Normal.

For children, especially, and for all of us, I hate to use artificial flavorings, food coloring, and fake ingredients (like artificial sweeteners). Yet, many play doughs use these as a staple.

When our oldest son was little, we saw a direct connection between artificial food colors and flavors and his hyperactivity and acting out. We made a commitment to follow the Feingold Diet, which eliminated these things, and preservatives as well.

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You may read about the Feingold Diet here. Interestingly, when my husband was young, his parents also put him on the Feingold Diet, something I didn’t know until our son had been on it for awhile.

For a book that can help to explain it, plus give help for what to make, The Feingold Cookbook for Hyperactive Children is one available on amazon.

We also have the Kid-Friendly ADHD & Autism Cookbook, which has some great tips, alternatives to “regular kid food”, and lots of great kid-friendly recipes. It’s available at amazon as well. Note that these are affiliate links.

Gluten free play-dough

Also, we found that he needed to follow a gluten-free diet. But…commercial play-dough is based on wheat (flour), as are many of the recipes for home-made play-dough. Most are based on flour and salt. They were non-toxic, but still not for us!

This play-dough is meant to be eaten! Not just “it won’t kill you but don’t eat it.”

It’s Edible Play-Dough!

Kids love play-dough, though! And if your kids are like ours (three regular, curious, active boys) they will eat the play-dough!! Mine seemed particularly drawn to eating it–especially my boy who really didn’t need it!

What to do?

Well…thankfully, I remembered the recipe I’d written down. So I hunted that up, and liked what we made!

Fun, Quick, Easy!

My recipe is a quick & easy one that you can give to your kiddos with the assurance that you know exactly what’s in there, plus it’s a fun dessert treat when they’re done creating!

This play-dough is naturally colored, so if that bothers you, you may want to move on. But if you just want to have something fun for your kids to create with, then eat, read on!

You can look at it more like an edible cookie-dough, I guess, because that’s more the color it will turn out (And I know someone is thinking, “I hope all cookie dough is edible!”  I hope so too, but all cookie dough is not meant to be eaten raw, because of the eggs).  Cookie-dough colored play-dough is actually more realistic than bright orange or pink anyway, if your kids are making pretend food.

The Recipe:

All Natural, Gluten-Free, Three Ingredient Edible Play-Dough

• One part Smooth Peanut Butter
• One part Honey
• One part Dry Milk Powder (can use non-dairy milk powder)
• One part can be 1/2 cup, 1 cup, 2 cups, just depending on how much you’d like to end up with. 1 cup of each would be an average amount for 1 child.

Simply:

• Mix in a bowl with your hands.

• Get your kids to help–they love to squish dough between their fingers!
• Gather into a ball
• Cover with plastic wrap or put in ziplock bag
• Refrigerate til kind of firm.

My variations:

• I substitute CAROB POWDER for the dry milk. Cocoa powder would also work well. This makes a dark dough.
• BROWN RICE FLOUR/POTATO STARCH/non-GMO CORN STARCH may be substituted for dry milk.

Have fun with your all-natural, gluten-free, 3 Ingredient, (Delicious) Edible Play-Dough!

You can actually bake your creations as well. They may crumble a little, but they’ll still be delicious! ?

• Store unused play dough in the fridge and use just take out what you want to use or eat. If you play with it too much, you may want to make more just to eat, depending on how gunky it gets!
• Sometimes we roll this dough into balls, add raisins, nuts, or coconut, and they make great little raw dessert treats!

Sometimes you want to get your hands into REAL clay. Read about our recent experience getting our hands into the mud in this post, Lessons from Clay in the Potter’s Hands…

We love to get our hands into stuff of all kinds. Hands-on learning is fun, and it’s good for the brain!!

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