This slow cooker play dough is so easy to make even young kids can get involved in making it.

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When I first realized that I could make play dough in my slow cooker – I just had to try it! I make a *lot* of play dough and have made many variations of my basic recipe (which you should check out – if only to watch the fun video tutorial). But that version is made by me, in a saucepan, on the hob/stovetop. But if play dough could be made in the slow cooker, then my SON could make it. With a bit of supervision, of course. He’s not yet four years old! 😉 I have a small 3-quart slow cooker which is just perfect for a family of three – and for making play dough, so it transpires!

I tweaked the original recipe a bit so here are the ingredients we used:

½ cup plain flour
¼ cup cornstarch
¼ cup salt
2 tablespoons cream of tartar
¾ cup warm water
1 tablespoon oil
food dye – we used about 6-8 drops of neon purple

F added all the dry ingredients to the slow cooker bowl. He loves making his own concoctions with flour and water so he had to be patient here and understand why we had to use precise measurements of the ingredients.

He decided we should make purple play dough, so I mixed together the water, food dye and oil in a measuring jug and F carefully poured it in.

Then he gave everything a very good stir! We had to make sure all the flour was well mixed in. Then I put the bowl into the slow cooker and turned it on to a low heat, and set the time for 30 minutes. When the timer went off we rushed to have a look. Ta-da!

I scraped around the bowl to form the dough into one clump.

Then I turned it out onto some wax paper and let it cool a little. Then I kneaded it for a while until it was smooth.

When it was properly cool we were ready to play!

Pros and cons of slow cooker play dough:

Unless you mix in the food dye afterwards, you can only make one colour at a time
You have to wait 30 minutes to make each batch (stovetop takes more like 5 minutes)
BUT, your child can really be involved in making it – safely!