Have you ever made your own playdough? Store bought playdough is okay in a pinch, but making your own is a money saver and you can make TONS of it in mere minutes.
Inspired by The Artful Parent’s Autumn Arts and Crafts book, The Artful Year: Autumn, we finally pitched our peppermint playdough in favor of a more seasonal scent: Pumpkin Pie!
Pumpkin Pie Playdough Recipe…
I used our favorite play dough recipe, which also happens to be the favorite of my daughter’s awesome preschool class, so I’m not going to get experimental with the dough itself, but we did experiment with the spice combination.
The dough itself takes about 20 minutes to prepare, it cooks on the stove-top, and the most complicated-to-find ingredient it calls for is cream of tartar. If it’s hard for you to find, you can get Cream of Tartar on Amazon.
Yes, you can find 2-minute dough recipes, and I’d encourage you to use them if you’re short on time, but the benefit of this recipe is that it will last for ages. Ages. Scroll down for a PRINTABLE recipe card.
After we made the dough, I placed it on the counter to cool. Meanwhile, my 2-year old worked away at pinching out a real pie crust.
When the dough was cool to touch, we squeezed orange liquid watercolors on half of it and then kneaded it in. For this step, be sure to mix on a surface that won’t absorb the watercolors. My 4-year old wanted to make half the dough orange and half of it white.
Although we had planned to use a jar of pumpkin pie spice in the dough, my 4-year old was curious about using whole spices that we just bought, so we pulled out the coffee grinder and gave it a very loud whirl. Fun! I don’t have a proper nutmeg grinder, but this seemed to do the trick. And the smell of cardamom — I absolutely love it.
We experimented with the spice blend by adding the different spices, first quite cautiously and then rather liberally, and in different combinations. I learned that my 4-year old isn’t too crazy about the smell of cardamom, but loves cinnamon.
- 5 cups water
- 2½ cups salt
- 3 tbsp. cream of tartar
- 10 tbsp. vegetable oil
- 5 cups flour
- Food coloring or liquid watercolors
- Pumpkin Pie Spice, or a blend of cinnamon, nutmeg, ginger, and cardamom
- Mix everything but the food coloring together in a large pot until somewhat smooth. It will be lumpy. Not to worry, the dough will get smoother as it cooks.
- Cook the dough over a low heat. Mix frequently. The water will slowly cook out of the mixture and you’ll notice it starts to take on a sticky dough appearance.
- Keep mixing until the edges of the dough along the side and bottom of the pan appear dry. Pinch a piece of dough. If it’s not gooey, the dough is ready.
- Place the dough on a counter top or large cutting board or cooking tray that can withstand a little food coloring.
- Knead the warm dough until it’s smooth and then divide it into the number of colors that you’d like to make. We divided our in half: one orange and the other white.
- Flatten the ball, add a little bit of food coloring, and knead it in. Add more food coloring to get the desired shade.
- Store the dough in a large Ziplock bag or sealed container. Unused, it’ll keep for months.
My 2-year old was very happy, however, to shake-shake-shake the pie spices all over her gigantic mound of dough. Can you imagine how yummy our kitchen smelled?
After all this cooking, it was time to bake! At this point, our orange and white/tan doughs marbled into something lovely, and we got busy making small cakes and setting them out to eat on a 3-tier plate server.
Playdough Recipes
Rainbow Play Dough, Tinkerlab
No-cook Cinnamon Playdough, The Imagination Tree
39 Ways to Play with Playdough, The Artful Parent
Downloadable (Free) Playdough Recipe Book, Nurture Store
Fall Activities
Fall Bucket List, Tinkerlab
40 Autumn Activities for Kids, The Imagination Tree
Make Fall Sunprints, Tinkerlab
Multi-color Leaf Prints, Kleas
Negative Leaf Impressions, Tinkerlab
Happy Fall!
{ 12 comments… read them below or add one }
You are such an inspiration, Rachelle! We’re going to try this tomorrow. The little guy is also a fan of the grinder.
On another note, I see in a number of your posts that there is a this at the bottom:
Call for an estimate 724-498-1551
corey.salzano@gmail.com
I wasn’t sure if this was intentional in some way (maybe I’m missing something?), but FYI!
-KT
Hi KT!
I just noticed that estimate thing today, too — weird! I recently added a plugin that I just deleted and I’m not seeing it now, so maybe I fixed it. I hope! You’re the best for bringing this to my attention. As for the inspiration bit, shucks! Enjoy your pumpkin playdough.
xo, Rachelle
This is WONDERFUL! I’ve been thinking about re-introducing playdough to Little A to see if she’s ready and this will be perfect. Thanks so much for the idea.
You’re welcome Jess! Play dough never goes out of style. Sometimes they lose interest in it, but my kids are always happy to come back to it after a break. xo
Our old pumpkin play dough recipe always came out too runny so we’re going to give this one a whirl this afternoon – thank you so much for sharing and the recipe card is a huge help too! Love those whole spices. The girls are so excited, they’ve been asking for new “fall” play dough. : )
How did it go, MaryLea? Runny play dough is no fun. My 2-year old proudly calls it her pumpkin pie play dough — the smell is awesome!
Thanks SO much for the mentions Rachelle! Your recipe creates a LOT of play dough- wow! We could do with making a huge batch like that, amazing!
It does make a lot of dough, Anna. Hmmm, maybe I should have been more clear about that? I like having big portions because it gives my two kids the opportunity to explore lots of possibilities. And how could I not mention you in the context of play dough? xo
We just made this – so much fun! I made the huge batch for some to keep at home and some to send to my littlest’s preschool class (I’m their playdough supplier!). I used a jarred pumpkin pie spice from Trader Joe’s and it smells so good! Now that we’re working with the dough, it actually reminds me more of apple pie than pumpkin pie. Good either way!
Is that 2 1/2 cups of salt for the recipe? I just wanted to make sure since it was abbreviated and the other cups aren’t.
Thanks!
Hi Michelle,
Oops! I shouldn’t have done that…will fix it shortly. Yes! It’s cups, and if you go with the standard silo of salt, it’s usually one entire container. Enjoy!
Rachelle
My daughter and I made this a few days ago for us and my preprimary Montessori classroom that I teach. We scented ours with just cinnamon, and used several different food colors. They turned out fantastic! And are such a huge hit with my class as well. Not only was it a great new item to add to my art shelf, it beats store bought playdoh, it is a new sensory item (they loved squishing it), AND they loved smelling it. Who knew homemade playdoh could be such a great multiple lesson. Thanks so much.
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