When your child is diagnosed with Celiac disease, one thing that may slip your mind, as you’re removing the Oreos and Teddy Grahams from your cupboard, is the other non-food items that your child comes into contact with that could be making them ill. One of those seemingly harmless, but very dangerous, items is play dough. All homemade and commercially available play dough contain wheat flour as the main ingredient. And although your child should not be eating the play dough, we all know that children get carried away and like to nibble on their creations (until they’ve tasted it, that usually only happens once). Plus, since the gluten will dry all over their hands, it increases the chance of them accidentally ingesting the gluten, even if they don’t mean to.
By making this gluten-free play dough, your gluten-free child can have all the fun of making “cookies”, snakes, snowmen, and anything else their imaginations can conjure up. Because it is homemade, you can customize the colour, and if you decide to get funky, you can add some nice chunky glitter to make the play dough sparkle. Make a batch for at home and a batch for at school or preschool and your child will never be left out of the fun!
Yields approximately 1 cup of play dough
Ingredients:
- 1/2 cup white rice flour
- 1/2 cup cornstarch
- 1/4 cup salt
- 2 tsp cream of tartar
- 1 Tbsp vegetable oil
- 3/4 cup water
- Liquid or gel food color, or 1 package dry Kool-Aid powder
- 1/2 tsp chunky glitter, your choice of color (optional)
NOTE: I used glitter from the dollarstore, they are larger flakes, not superfine.
Directions:
- In a large sauce pan, whisk together the white rice flour, cornstarch, salt, and cream of tartar.
- Add the water, oil, colour, and glitter, if using.Whisk until smooth.
- Bring to boil, stirring constantly, over medium heat. Keep stirring until it all the play dough stays stuck to the spoon.
- Turn dough out onto a sheet of waxed paper. It will be very hot, so you can let it cool for a minute before kneading it. Continue kneading it until it is completely cool. It will be very sticky at first, but becomes less sticky as it cools.
- Store in an air-tight bag in the refrigerator.
What is chunky glitter and where would I find it?
Hi Liz, it’s just a bigger flaked glitter, I got mine from the dollar store. You can find ultra fine glitter, which wouldn’t work as well, I don’t think. this stuff just gives bigger glitter pieces.
I would not get any work done if I made this, I would be playing all day with the dough!
Haha, maybe you should offer some for people in the tea room to play with. Keep them there longer.
The inner child comes to mind. Why shouldn’t you join in the fun!!
Isn’t that the truth!
Always young at heart.
Thank you for the recipe! Definitely going to try it soon for the four year old!
Awesome! Hope you have a great time playing play dough!