No-Cook Playdough Recipe [Plus Bonus Tips On How To Make It Even More Fun]

This post is about how to make no-cook playdough (or playdoh – how ever we spell it.)

It’s that ball of squishy wonderfulness that kids oh so love, yet is really cheap to produce, lasts more than one play session and is very therapeutic to play with!

Win, win, win…win.

I have probably tried every homemade playdough recipe going, but I’ve found one that was super easy and worked well no matter how slap-dash I was with the quantities.

When there is a recipe, I feel quite anxious that I have to stick to every measurement to get the end result correct.

But, with today’s recipe I’m sharing, you can relax and figure out your quantities depending on what consistency you want.

A few days later, the playdough keeps its consistency and holds up well to lots of little fingers squashing it over and over again.

Before You Start To Make Your No-Cook Playdough, Read These Tips

Make sure you have enough space to work

You can see how messy my work surface became after Indi decided she wanted to help 😀

Use a big bowl to mix your ingredients up

It didn’t help that I used a smaller bowl than I should have which was probably why my kitchen looked like a rainbow flour factory had had an explosion.

Have a little extra oil at hand to amend the consistency of dough

The oil makes the playdough nice and smooth, so if you find yourself with dough that’s a bit tough, add a teaspoon of oil and knead with your hands.

Keep going until you reach your desired squish.

Prepare a big plastic container to store the play doh in

Don’t store it in paper bags because the oil seeps through.

A Tupperware box or an airtight plastic container of some sort is the best.

Storing it properly will mean the playdough won’t dry out, lasting the longest time.

Easy, No-Cook Playdough Recipe

This makes a big handful of playdough (as you can see above – it makes one of the balls.) Multiply up to make more.

1. 8 tablespoons of plain flour
2. 2 tablespoons of table salt
3. 60ml warm water
4. 1 tablespoon of oil
5. Food colouring
6. Extra flour or oil if the consistency is not to your liking first time.

How To Make No-Cook Playdough

Step one:

Get a big-ish bowl, and mix together 8 tablespoons of plain flour (I used bread flour today and that seemed absolutely fine) and 2 tablespoons of table salt.

Step two:

In a separate little bowl, pour 60ml of warm or room temp water, one tablespoon of veggie or olive oil and the food colouring of your choice.

Step three:

Pour that into the flour and salt mix and mix up until it forms a dough-like mixture.

If you want to save on washing up, you can make a well in the centre of your flour and salt mix and add your liquids to that.

You’re going to mix it all up anyway so crack on as you please!

Step four:

Once you’ve got a pasty consistency, get your hands in the bowl and you will feel if you’ve got the right result.

Add some flour if it’s too loose, and add a tiny bit of oil if it’s not loose enough.

Step five:

Flour your surface and need it like you would pastry or bread. This is where you will be able to feel if you got your mix right.

You should now have a nice ball of play dough in just a few short minutes.

I managed to make 6 colours in 10 minutes, as seen in this video!

Look how fast I work! ?

I didn’t bother measuring the amounts after the 3rd colour, because it seemed the more I deviated from the recipe, the better the results.

For Additional Texture, These Are The Things We Like To Add To Playdough

Biodegradable glitter

I mention biodegradable glitter, because it’s a little better for the environment, but any glitter works.

Sprinkle some glitter on the top of the playdough balls and get your kids to knead it in, or put a glitter surprise in the middle and wait to see your children’s faces when they discover it!

Be prepared for a little mess – don’t we all love clearing up glitter?!

Small toy animals

A good activity when you’ve got lots of playdough is to hide small toy animals and get your children to try to dig them out with either their fingers if they’re little, or various utensils if they’re a bit bigger.

Little pom poms

Good in slime too, these little pom-poms are a good addition to soft play dough. They add a nice splash of colour and texture to the dough.

Blobs of food colouring in uncoloured playdough

This is really fun.

Skip the food colouring part of the recipe so that the playdough in its natural coloured state.

It should turn out an off white if you’re using this recipe without food colour.

Then add a few drops of food colour to the blob of dough, and ask your children to start knead it in to see what effects they can create.

If you start with one colour and build up, it’s a good activity to keep the children occupied for a longer time!

So there you have it, an easy recipe for no-cook playdough that takes minutes to make you feel like the best parent in the world!

Bonus No-Cook Playdough Recipe

There’s another recipe for playdoh that I really like, but is a little more expensive to produce.

It’s so much easier than the above, so it’s up to you to decide what you care about the most. Expense or time taken!

All you have to do is use a cheap hair conditioner and mix cornflour with it until it forms a dough.

Yes, that’s really it!

It makes the nicest consistency, sweet-smelling playdoh you will ever have the opportunity to squish.

Try it out, and most of all, enjoy!

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Last Updated on August 24, 2020 by Lucy Clarke