I have been making this recipe for over 15 years and it's by far the easiest, longest lasting, and perfectly soft play dough I have ever made. With a few simple ingredients you too can put this recipe together and pull out when you need an hour of distraction for your kiddos. I like to keep a old plastic container and keep a some plastic cookie cutters, kid sized rollers, plastic knives along with ziplocks of the pre made play dough. Play dough has lasted months for me. Just keep it air tight and sealed with minimal contact with air. After a few months I throw it out and make a new batch.
What you need:
2 cups of All Purpose flour (use the cheap stuff, don't be using your organic flour for this recipe)
2 Tbsp Cream of Tarter (I buy this in bulk on Amazon)
1 cup fine salt (again don't be using your expensive sea salt, use cheapest you can find and keep on hand for this recipe)
2 Tbsp Vegetable Oil (I buy a small cheap bottle I would never eat (hello canola) for this recipe too)
2 cups Boiling water (this part is for parents to do!)
Measure and add first four ingredients all together in a large bowl. Have an adult, carefully pour the boiling water over it all and mix well. Just keep stirring until it makes a nice soft dough. Stir, stir, stir!!! It will be very hot, then very warm for a while. Split it up and kneed food coloring into the dough if you want to color it. Wear gloves for this step if you have them!!
Kitchen Aid Mixer Variation: I typically double this recipe when I'm making it and have been using my mixer to do the labor for me and find it extremely helpful and mostly hands off the messy parts.
Dump first four ingredients in your mixer bowl with paddle attachment on. Slowly pour in boiling water with machine running on the lowest possible setting. Once your water is incorporated switch to the dough hook and let the machine run on low or med low for a couple minutes until it is all smooshy and soft. You can then divide the dough and place a few drops of food color straight into the center of each ball (the food coloring gel's work great here if you have them) then place each dough ball back into mixer one at a time kneeding with dough hook for a few minutes per color.