There are many 'recipes' for making a molding dough that children and people of all ability levels can use to be creative and make shapes with by using their own hands. This recipe, using our EZ DOH hand-crank mixer, enables children to easily and neatly make the dough themselves (which can also be a fun learning process).
In this electronic age, it's nice for young people to have an opportunity to make something with their own hands, and enjoy the feeling of creating shapes using their fingers and imaginations.
Our recipe calls for simple ingredients, but you can find many other recipes (both edible and inedible) that use similar (but different) ingredients, and different ways to mix the ingredients.
INGREDIENTS:
2 and 3/4 cups of all-purpose flour
1 package of jello (3 ounce package). We used lime but any flavors/colors will work!
2 TBSP salt
2 TBSP of cream of tartar powder
2 TBSP of cooking oil (we used canola)
1 cup of hot water (roughly 150 degrees)
DIRECTIONS:
To keep things neat, we did everything in our EZ DOH hand-crank mixer (older models with the plastic dough hook may struggle with this heavy dough). Start the process by putting one cup of flour in the mixing container, along with the other dry ingredients (jello, salt, tartar) and the oil. Give it a few turns with the crank and then add in the water and start mixing. It will only take a minute (with a little help from a rubber scraper) to blend everything. Then start adding in the remaining flour (about 1/2 cup at a time) and keep cranking to get a good blend (about 1 minute of cranking every time you add some flour). Of course, the cranking will get more difficult as you proceed, so at the end an adult may need to do the final cranking. Here's how it will look when you're done.
As an alternative to making your own dough, there's another 'made in the USA' product that's called Eco-Dough https://ecokidsusa.com/ that you may want to check out. Eco-Dough is also sold at
https://anytownusa.com/pages/search-results-page?q=eco+dough, which only sells products made in the USA (like EZ DOH).
No matter how you go about making or acquiring your molding dough, the main thing is to make something creative and have fun. After you're done playing, keep your dough in a plastic bag so it doesn't dry out (if it does dry out, you can restore it by adding a little water and working it into the dough).
