Vanilla Mint Play Dough

Delicious Smelling Amazingly Soft Vanilla Mint Play Dough | Mama Papa Bubba{this post contains affiliate links}

There’s no doubt we’re a little play dough obsessed around here…  We use it to practice cutting skills, we gift it to our friends, we open pretend play shops with it, and apparently we create shoes out of it too! ☺  

After creating pumpkin spice play dough and caramel apple pie play dough earlier this fall, I was excited to start creating some winter / holiday play dough recipes.  Lo and behold, Miss G found 2 little bottles in today’s Christmas countdown snowman – one of vanillin and one of iridescent glitter – with a note that said to create a big batch of yummy smelling vanilla mint play dough, so that’s just what we did!

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As usual, we turned to our favourite ever no-cook play dough recipe for starters and made some tweaks along the way.

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The result was an amazingly soft and sparkly dough that makes a whole room smell like creamy, minty deliciousness, which couldn’t be more perfect for the holiday season.  Remember those pastel coloured mint meltaways from your childhood?  Well that’s exactly what this play dough smells like – divine, I tell you!

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Delicious-Smelling Amazingly Soft Vanilla Mint Play Dough

  • 2 tablespoons of vegetable oil
  • 2 tablespoons of glycerine
  • 1 1/2 cups of boiling water
  • 5 drops of peppermint essential oil (peppermint extract would work too!)

Place all dry ingredients into a large bowl and mix well.  Add wet ingredients and give the mixture a quick mix, banging off your whisk every once and a while.  At this point, your mixture will seem too wet and sticky, but resist adding more flour.  Leave the semi-mixed dough on the counter to cool.  Once cooled for about 10 minutes, dump the mixture out onto the counter and knead really well.  The dough will lose its stickiness as it continues to cool and be kneaded.  Knead for about 3 minutes, or until the dough reaches the perfect consistency.

Side note:  We use vanillin because pure vanilla is not readily available here in Kuwait.  If you do not have vanillin, using regular liquid vanilla should be okay, though the scent may not be as strong and you may need to add a touch more flour to make up for the added liquid.  An alternative solution would be to scrape the insides out of 1 or 2 vanilla beans.  The play dough would have black specks in it (think vanilla bean ice cream), but it would smell delicious and not muck with the liquid to dry ingredients ratio.

Enjoy!!

 

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18 thoughts on “Vanilla Mint Play Dough

  1. Is that half a cup of salt Jen? Or half a teaspoon? I haven’t made play dough before but E has an ear infection so we’ve been stuck at home for nearly a week and going. crazy.

    1. Sure is, Erin. I swear I must have been half asleep when I wrote this post… I’m sorry that E is not well. Hoping for a speedy recovery!

  2. I live over 6,000 feet above sea level (in the mountains of Utah), so I wasn’t sure if I would have to make any changes. I have to alter when baking, but I wasn’t sure if this would count, and because of the warnings in the directions not to add extra flour, I was afraid to.

    But for anyone else high up like me, I had to add a lot of extra flour. My first double-batch, I had powdered vanilla, and I had to add a smidgen over 2 cups extra flour to get it to close to the proper consistency. When I switched to clear liquid vanilla, I had to increase up to 3-4 extra cups of flour.

    That said, it came out great! Next time, though, I might add a little extra glitter to compensate for how much extra flour I had to add, but the texture was still fantastic! And people loved the gift too! So thanks for the idea! :)

  3. Here is some help for anyone trying this! I found glycerin at Whole Foods in the personal care aisle (like by lotions). I couldn’t find it at Target… I made a double batch and it made 5-6 snowmen kits for me. Remember if you make a double batch, you have to knead twice as long. ;) Don’t use a whisk! Mine got playdough all stuck in it… duh. :) I used twice as much glitter as it called for, and it was just glittery enough, in my opinion. I didn’t use extract, vanilla or vanillin (wish I had, though!) but i did find it sticky after kneading for 10 minutes or so, so added about 3/4 cup more flour (remember, doubled). Once it cooled completely it seemed okay consistency… We’ll see tomorrow!

  4. I need to make enough for 10 kids. How much does one batch make and would you just multiply the ingredients accordingly or would you have to adjust any ingredients?

  5. I’m really excited to try this recipe! You say to let it cool for 10 minutes before kneading the dough. Did I miss something…I didn’t see any isntructions to cook it? How does the dough get “heated up” so that it has to cool down afterwards?

    1. It’s okay – I just found my answer by reading the ingredient list properly LOL! It’s the boiling water that makes it hot and needs to cool down a bit. Ha ha!

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