Baking Soda Play Dough

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Baking soda play dough is an allergy-friendly alternative to traditional recipes.

No childhood is complete without play dough. I mean really, can you imagine?

Over the last several months, Garrett’s imagination has really been budding, so I knew I had to find a good play dough recipe. He loves it! He insists on calling it cookie dough however (LOL), and despite all the Play Doh toys we have, and how I show him to build things with it, he only has interest in one toy.

Yep, he likes to “squish it”.

Sadly for those of us with food allergy issues, homemade play dough often incorporates gluten and/or wheat. Yuck!

But that’s okay! It’s really easy – and a lot of fun – to make your own, gluten-free play dough. There are lots of fun variations you can use when you make it yourself, such as adding glitter for “sparkle dough”, or unsweetened Kool-Aid packets for the coloring and a nice fruity scent, or even scenting your play dough with essential oils – my own favorite, as it’s a great way to get your kids up close and personal with the medicinal properties essential oils have to offer.

This play dough recipe uses baking soda and cornstarch and is the best homemade playdough ever! In fact, I’d say it’s just as good as the store-bought stuff. Garrett and I sat at the table and rolled, squished, and re-rolled playdough without it sticking to our hands, which made me very happy. I was also quite impressed with how well it came out of some of some of the more detailed molds.

Gluten-Free Baking Soda Play Dough

*This recipe is an adaption of the Arm & Hammer Play Clay recipe

2 cups baking soda
1 cup cornstarch
1 ½ cups water
1 tablespoon oil

Mix ingredients together in a sauce pan and heat over medium heat, stirring constantly. If you have older kids, they may get a kick out of doing this because the baking soda makes it fizz for quite a while before it starts to thicken.

And when it starts to thicken, beware! It goes really fast.

Take it off the heat as soon as it’s thick enough to start wanting to stick together. Let cool, paritally covered until it can be handled.

Separate into balls and color. I used wilton icing gel colors left over from my cake decorating days and really loved the results.

You can also use the liquid food coloring available in most grocery stores. It usually comes in a box of four colors – red, blue, green, and yellow . Just remember that red, blue, and yellow are the primary colors from which you can make any color you want.

Red and yellow for instance, make orange, and blue and red make purple. The green play dough pictured here, was made by mixing blue and yellow because I didn’t have green coloring.

Make this = your kids will love you. At least, that’s how it works for me!

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