Pumpkin Pie Playdough

We have a few pre-Thanksgiving playdates scheduled for this week, and so this weekend, Anne and I set to work making a little treat to take along to give to our friends when we see them. Pumpkin pie playdough! It made our house smell super-amazing.

I've been thinking of scented play dough for a while. I like the idea of making playdough into a full sensory experience (which is why in our house, you'll find jars of crazy-colored dough studded with all sorts of things: marbles, pine needles, pennies) Pumpkin pie-spiced playdough worked in another of those senses and seemed appropriately festive for the season.

There are several good pumpkin pie playdough recipes out there, but none of them seemed quite scented enough for our liking, so we made up our own, adapted from the basic playdough recipe at How Does She? (our favorite).

Pumpkin Pie Playdough (makes enough for two)

-2 cups flour
-2 cups water
-1/2 cup salt
-2 tablespoons olive oil (any oil can be used)
-4 teaspoons cream of tartar
-food coloring (any color you desire; we were going for verisimilitude, so we used red and yellow to make a doughy brown color)

The spice mix:

-2-3 tablespoons cinnamon
-1 tablespoon allspice
-2 teaspoons nutmeg
-1/2 teaspoon ginger

Or you can just go to town with a jar of pre-mixed pumpkin pie spice.

Mix all of the ingredients in a saucepan. Place over medium heat and stir until the dough forms into one big clump. Turn out onto lightly floured surface and knead until the dough is cool and stretchy. You can adjust the scent or color at this point by adding more spice or food coloring (just make sure you knead it some more to get everything incorporated).

I think my favorite thing about this recipe is breaking out the cookie cutters and having the cookie-making experience...without the extra calories (because you definitely don't want to eat this stuff, blecch). Frees up more space for all that (real, hopefully edible) pumpkin pie.



Do you have a favorite playdough recipe? Please share! We can't get enough of the stuff.