This pumpkin spice playdough recipe is quick and easy to make! Shop bought playdough can be expensive, especially if you want to buy larger quantities. It is much cheaper to make your own and on the plus side, you also know exactly what’s in your playdough!
All ingredients in this recipe are natural, so you don’t need to worry about your children being ill if they accidentally eat a little bit or having any skin problems if they use the playdough for too long.
You’ll only need a few ingredients to create this recipe and most of these you’ll have already in your kitchen cupboard. If you don’t have pumpkin pie spice, just use cinnamon, cloves or mixed spice (or a mix of any of these)
This pumpkin spice playdough recipe is perfect for autumn and you can even use it to make simple decorations to decorate your home for Halloween. And of course, the children can use it to create all sorts of pumpkin pies, mini pumpkins, sweets and other treats.
Ingredients
1 cup water
1/2 cup table salt
2 tsp cream of tartar
2 tbsp vegetable oil (sunflower or other oil)
6-8 drops of orange food colouring (or a mix of yellow and red food colouring to create orange colour)
1 cup plain cake flour
1/2 -1 teaspoon of pumpkin pie spice
In a medium saucepan, combine the water, salt, and cream of tartar on low heat and stir until well combined. Add the vegetable oil and food colouring. Slowly add the flour while stirring and make sure that you stir out any lumps from the flour. Once the dough starts to thicken, turn the mixture to the slightly oiled kitchen counter. Add the spice and knead the dough until it’s smooth.
You can store the pumpkin pie dough in an airtight container (or a plastic bag) for a couple of weeks or so.
The dough is ready to be used straight away and I’m sure your children or grandchildren will enjoy playing with it.
Magdalena
My playdough making tips
What does cream of tartar do for playdough?
The cream of tartar is a like a magic ingredient in your playdough. It’s what makes the playdough elastic and nicely textured. Don’t be tempted to leave out the cream of tartar if you don’t have it at hand, as your playdough will just end up very dry and will crumble. Depending on how much you add-in, you can change the consistency of the playdough. About 2 teaspoons will make your playdough nicely soft and easy to play with (great for smaller children). On the other scale, if you add 2 tablespoons you’ll end up with a firm dough, which could be used instead of a stress ball for adults or if somebody needs to strengthen their muscles in their hands (perhaps after an injury).
Can you make playdough without cream of tartar?
Yes, you can replace cream of tartar with fresh lemon juice. If the recipe says 2 teaspoons of cream of tartar (like my recipe above) you can replace it with 3 tablespoons of lemon juice. But you will need to adjust the water amount for your recipe to make sure you are not making your dough too wet! Simply take away the 3 tablespoons of water from the water amount and add all the other ingredients as normal.
Why is my homemade playdough sticky?
The changes are that you might have added to much water or not enough flour. Try to remember which is the reason and then either just add more flour (if you haven’t measured your flour correctly at the beginning, but you know your water was correctly measured). If you added to much water, you need to add more flour, but you might also need to add more of the other ingredients to compensate for the dough getting bigger in volume. This is to make sure that the dough still stays nicely elastic and easy to play with.
Is homemade playdough safe to eat?
Ehm, well…whilst I’m sure you’ll make the homemade playdough with food save ingredients and technically it would be save to eat, I’m sure you’ll agree with me that it’s best not to eat it. The amount of salt in the playdough will make it pretty unpalatable for children to eat, but if they do eat a little bit you don’t need to worry that they will end up with any serious problems.
Can you preserve playdough creations?
Playdough is intended to be used and re-used time after time, but if you’d like to preserve your children’s playdough creations you can dry out the playdough in the oven on very low temperature (about 100C) for about 20 minutes or so. You can also leave out the playdough to dry naturally and then spray it with a hair spray.
Why do you need salt in playdough?
The salt is fairly important ingredients. Salt acts as a preservative and also adds texture to your playdough.
What kind of salt is used in playdough?
Table or cooking salt that is finely grounded is best to use for your homemade playdough. This is because the salt doesn’t disolve particularly well in the dough and if you use for example a sea salt (or rock salt) you’ll end up with unpleasant hard lumps in your playdough.
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