Lemony Play Dough

Oh how I adore lemons!  We bought a ton of them last week in order to make a big batch of our favourite homemade cleaner and some chia lemonade, but only really needed the juice of the lemons for both projects.  It seemed sort of sad to let all of those rinds go to waste, so I zested them before getting to the juicing part and set the zest aside for later, knowing that I’d come up with some sort of plan for it.  Well,  we could have made our yummy lemon poppyseed pancakes or some lemon cookies or muffins, but what did we make?  Why lemony play dough of course!  {Does that surprise you??}

As we usually do when creating new play dough varieties,  we started with our favourite no-cook play dough recipe sans the Kool-Aid, and then added our scent and colour – in this case, fresh lemon zest and a little bit of yellow food colouring.

The result was a soft-as-a-cloud dough that smells amazingly refreshing and zesty – it’s seriously like a little energy boost at first sniff.  I’m not even joking.

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While Gracen washed her hands, I set up this quick and easy invitation to play… Our new batch of play dough plus plastic utensils, cookie cutters, food picks, buttons, and straw pieces, all in yellow.

She played for a long while making and decorating all sorts of ‘cookies’ for me.  And if we’re being truthful, I played for a long while too.   The best part?  How soft and lemony your hands are afterwards!  ☺

Soft-as-a-Cloud Lemony Play Dough

• 2 cups of all-purpose flour
• 1/2 cup of table salt
• 2 tablespoons of cream of tartar
• zest of 4 lemons

• 2 tablespoons of vegetable oil
• 2 tablespoons of glycerine
• 1 1/2 cups of boiling water
• yellow food colouring (we love Wilton’s icing gels)

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 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:  This play dough turns out just fine without the glycerine added to it.  The glycerine does add a good amount of shine and stretch, however, so I do recommend it.

Enjoy!!