Operation: Creation

Day 21: MAKE HOMEMADE PLAY DOH

I’m not a crafty person.  I don’t scrapbook.  I don’t make elaborate craft projects with the kids.  I don’t make my own Christmas cards.  I figure, if you can buy it, why make it?  But I’m a good cook, and I’m an expert recipe follower.  So I’m sure I’ll have no problem making homemade Play Doh. 

Maybe after that I’ll sew the gaping hole in my husband’s favorite sweatpants.  Ok, let’s not get carried away.

It turns out I need to demote myself from Expert Recipe Follower to Sadly Pathetic I Should Stay Out of the Kitchen Forever Recipe Follower.  Our homemade Play Doh was a disaster!  I mixed up 2 batches, one on the stovetop, one in the slow cooker.  The former was undercooked and overly gooey.  The latter was overcooked and virtually unmalleable.  I don’t think I can throw the blame on TWO bad recipes.  The blame must fall on me. 

I found the stovetop recipe on the internet, finding several versions that just varied the proportions of the same ingredients.  Maybe I chose incorrectly and should have experimented with the one that called for 1/2 cup of salt instead of 1/4 cup.  I couldn’t get this stuff off my fingers!

Then there’s the slow cooker recipe.  My slow cooker tends to cook faster than most recipes call for, and I thought I adjusted for that.  Wrong.  Another problem was that the recipe told me to knead the food coloring into the already formed ball of goop instead of during the cooking process.  The only thing that accomplished was staining my hands red.  I was left with a tye-dyed, crumbling mess. 

Both batches went directly to the trash.