I made this today using Wilton Icing Colors, found at Michael's in the cake decorating section, instead of food coloring.

http://www.morningglorydaycare.ca/recipes.htm

That's the basic recipe, scroll down to gluten-free playdough. I put the link because I found GF fingerpaint, and some other cool adaptable recipes there. LOTS of recipes/ideas!

We now have one big glob of cookie monster blue -- I went a little nutso with the blue, and also managed to drop the little container onto my floor and now have blue fingers and toes and had to wash my floor, LOL -- and one bigger glob of pinkish-red. I got a little scared after the blue and used a good bit less of the red. Um, our blue is really, really, really blue. :D The paste colorings work great!

I am sending this in to Jake's preschool Monday. Oh, I am going to mix some lavender EO in when it cools. Katie wants to help with that. ;) And I bought yellow, too, so I might get more adventurous and make more later, but I kind of did this on the fly, thinking I could add color when it cooled, but then when I looked at the consistency I thought I'd better do it while it was liquid. I used about a teaspoon of each color and divided 1 cup flour/1 cup cornstarch/1 cup salt etc in half. Hope that makes sense.

Whew. It's been a big-cooking day. Tomorrow will be, too. Trying to get really set up for school this week. :)

Lauren...I've seen gluten free playdough in a catalog, and I've always wondered why. Is it important to have gluten free just in case they eat some?!? Or is it absorbed through the skin? Really curious, because Devin plays with our regular playdough often and have always wondered since seeing the gluten free in my Discount School Supply catalog.

Thanks in advance!

I believe it's for both of those reasons. I just figured we are going to such lengths to avoid gluten, we may as well not have Playdough full of it.

Plus, I make our playdough, so I don't want to buy wheat flour specially for it, get it all over the counters, etc. But, in the early months, we used regular Playdough. Then it dried up and got all mixed up and I just decided to switch over.

Gotcha....thanks for the info. I have always wondered. Devin's WAY past the point that he could accidentally eat some - Logan's not, but he doesn't have gluten issues. Thanks again.

Cookie Monster blue, I'll have to try that one. Lol. The batches I made months ago came out a bit on the wet side, so they're kind of hard to work with. I may junk them and start over. Did you have that problem? Maybe I'll use your recipe this time. I made some cool colors of dough. William likes to pretend bake with his playdough, so I got some golden yellow Wilton paste coloring, and some brown. I added brown to the golden yellow to make a golden brown (like choc. chip cookie dough color). THen made a dark brown, choc. chip color. William had a great time making little brown balls for the chips to put into rounds of the golden brown. When you make your own, there's no limit to how creative you can get (ideas please everyone!)

Delpha, our Naturopath who is supervising William's diet says that the gluten can get into their systems two ways from wheat flour playdough. Either they can have some remnants on their hands and eat or get fingers into mouths, or by the playdough getting under their fingernails and if it stays there long enough, he says it can be absorbed. Even tiny bits of it. That said, we do let William play with wheat dough when there's no alternative. I just have him wash his hands really well, then have him scrape his fingernails on a bar of soap in the bath that night. I don't think we've had an infraction from this. We also switched to gluten and other allergy-free soaps, lotions, shampoo, toothpaste, glue. It's not that big of a deal.

HTH, gotta run chickadees. ; ) -Laura

Mine were not wet at all. But it gets really tough to stir at the end, and I kind of let them get on the overcooked side, then just scrape all the bits together. Just keep on cooking.

I also started with one batch, then poured half or so into a second pan. The second pan batch came out better - with slightly less salt, because it stays at the bottom. Does that make sense? I like it with a little less salt than the recipe calls for.

Oh! I forgot. I did have mine come out kind of wet last time, so this time I did heaping cups of rice flour, corn starch, and salt, and kept the liquids the same. So 1 heaping cup of each of those (though I think next time I will do 3/4 cup salt instead), then the rest of the recipe the same...2 cups water, 2 tsp oil, 4 tsp cream of tartar. I *think* I added about a tsp of each color to each half-batch, so that would be 2 tsp of coloring for that size batch, total. Depending on how intense you want your color. :)

I got royal blue, red red, and lemon yellow. They were $1.67 per container. Pretty cheap!

One more thing. After it cools, we kneaded it a good bit on a floured cutting board (floured w/white rice flour). Then I poured a little canola oil into my hands, rubbed them together, then rubbed it on the dough and worked it in. It felt a little sticky, esp the blue, probably because of the less salt.

Hope that isn't too confusing! My brain is not putting words together well today.