This Christmas play dough recipe is inspired by the Christmas-flavoured sugar I make each year to go on our Christmas-movie-popcorn.
The sugar smells exactly like Christmas, with a blend of herbs and spices that fills the house with a festive feeling and, as I often have play dough on my brain, I thought why not try it for a Christmas play dough recipe?
Christmas Day play dough recipe
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This article is one of our Christmas sensory play activities and part of our Christmas activities and crafts for children.
Play dough is just fantastic – a super sensory play material that feels good, smells good, doesn’t make too much mess and my kids love it.
It’s great as a calm-down activity for giddy, festive kids, and put together with some Christmas cookie cutters it makes a lovely Christmas gift .
Here’s the recipe with the special blend of herbs and spices that smells exactly like Christmas.
Start by filling your salt with all the Christmas flavour. Take one cup of salt and add:
1. the zest of an orange or two clementines
2. some vanilla pod
3. a good grating of nutmeg
4. three cloves
5. some ground cinnamon
6. a bay leaf
Blitz this with a blender until everything is chopped, mixed and smelling wonderful.
Add two cups of plain (all purpose) flour…
two tablespoons of vegetable oil and two tablespoons of cream of tartar.
Pour in one and a half cups of boiling water…
and some food colouring. Red? Gold? Green? Then mix it and form it into a dough.
Add some extra shine to the play dough recipe by pouring in a little glycerine.
Add a good dash of glitter for some festive sparkle. Knead the dough for a few minutes and then you’re done.
Wrap the play dough in a plastic bag and it will last into the new year.
awesome, I love this – especially the idea of it smelling of christmas
This seasonal play dough recipe is such a lovely idea! The holiday scents always bring back wonderful memories for me. This is a great way to create special new memories for kids! Thanks for sharing!
Oh, I love this play dough recipe Cathy! LOVE! I bet it smells amazing!
It does, it does Crystal. You should give it a try. 🙂
Hi, I was doing this receipe in a rush this morning and added all the spices but managed somehow to forget the salt. I now have a very sloppy dough. I don’t want to throw it away but Ive added lots more flour and after a short while of playing it’s back to putty? Do u know of anything I can do at this stage I rectify it? It does smell lovely though. Thank you.
Oh no Paula! The only thing I can think of is to make another batch (so you have the boiling water agent going in), add in your sloppy dough and add in the salt you missed out first time. I don’t think you’re going to get your current dough to work without the salt, and adding it in at this stage won’t work as there’s no water to dissolve it.
I love this!! I’m planning on making this to put in the goody bags for my son’s Christmas party. Will this recipe be enough for 19 kids or should I double it? I’ll obviously be giving small portions. Thanks!
Hi Lauren. I think I would certainly double and maybe even triple it for 19 kids, depending on how generous the portions will be. Hope all the kids like it!
Does the red food coloring bleed when mixing/playing with the dough?
I would hate to have kids running around with stained hands.
Hi Lorraine. No, ours never does. I think it’s important to mix the colour in with all the other ingredients in the bowl, so the colour binds with the dough and then doesn’t bleed. It’s when you leave the colour out and only add it in to the finished dough at the end that I think you might find it gets on hands.
Oh my this sounds too good. Do the kids eat it? I love the natural sound of it. Thanks for sharing.
I really cannot wait to make this for my class! I have 24 little ones and I know they will not be able to contain themselves over this! I know that I will have to triple the batch amount, however, how much salt should I start with initially? Thanks!!! Sam
Where do I get the glycerine can’t find it
We get ours from the baking section of the supermarket Carly – but if you can’t find it, you can just leave it out and the dough will still be lovely, just not quite as shiny. Cathy
Pharmacy’s sell it, that’s where I got mine last year when I wanted to make snow globes. Ask at the counter they will be able to help. X
I recently made a batch and after a week it went sticky….added in more flour and it was playable again but by the next day it was sticky ! I was storing in a plastic food bag at room temperature. Is there a better way to store? I used to keep playdough in the fridge but that would seem fine until out on the table and warming up would make it wet so I gave up on making it until this recent batch ….now I feel like giving up !!
Hi Rachel. What kind of food colouring did you use? I find the Wilton food gels much better than other food colouring in bottles which is more like a sticky liquid. I wonder if that was why yours was sticky?