Oh my goodness, guys. If I could only count the number of times I’ve been asked lately, “Do you have a gluten free play dough recipe??” I’ve lost track. I actually do have a tried, tested, and true gluten free play dough recipe – my baby play dough recipe! But it’s not a traditional play dough you’d keep on your shelf for days on end, so naturally I had to give creating one a try. Now here’s the thing… We’re not gluten free, nor do we have anyone in our day-to-day that’s gluten free, so I’ve never had to learn to properly use gluten free flours. That being said, I used our usual go-to play dough recipe as a jumping off point and I’m actually very pleased with how this gluten free version turned out. It’s soft, it’s squishy, it’s sort of heavy like my usual play dough is, and I actually really like it. And I’m a bit picky.
Now a few things to know…
- I’ve only tested this recipe with this one particular flour – Bob’s Red Mill Gluten Free All-Purpose Baking Flour (CAN). You can certainly trying using a different brand / type of gluten free flour, but I can’t guarantee it’ll work. I did try creating a recipe with Bob’s Red Mill Gluten Free 1-to-1 Baking Flour, but I liked the All-Purpose Baking Flour better for this purpose.
- With all of the gluten free play dough recipes I tested, I noticed that the finished doughs had a tiny bit of surface stickiness that our traditional play dough just doesn’t have. It’s not a ton of stickiness and it doesn’t make the dough any less fun to play with, but a couple of things to note… First off, when making and playing with this dough, make sure that your hands and work surface are completely dry. Just a tiny bit of extra moisture can add to that stickiness. Secondly, if you’re finding your dough a little too sticky at any point, add a little bit of cornstarch (probably no more than a teaspoon at a time) to your hands, your work surface, and/or the surface of your dough.
- Lastly, I’m not quite sure how this dough will last long term just yet. While our regular play dough recipe lasts for months on end, I only made the dough a few days ago, so it’s too early to tell just yet. So far so good, though. I just checked on it and it’s as though we just made it. You’ll want to store this dough just as you would our regular play dough – in an air-tight bag or container at room temperature away from heat sources (so no top of the fridge).
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Okay, disclaimers out of the way… Let’s get on with it, shall we? Here’s what you’ll need:
Bob’s Red Mill Gluten Free All-Purpose Baking Flour (CAN)
table salt
vegetable oil
boiling water
cornstarch
And this is what your finished dough will look like… Pretty, right?
We went for soft, pastel-y colours this time around and only used a tiny bit of food dye, but if vibrant colours are what you’re after, you can do that too. Just follow the instructions in my recipe at the bottom of this post carefully.
One other thing to note? This dough does have a mild “smell” to it… Most likely thanks to the fact that the gluten free flour contains bean flours, I’m guessing. It’s not terrible and I’m sure you could probably add a tiny bit of extract or kiddo-friendly essential oil to eliminate it, but we didn’t and it doesn’t bother us.
Okay, here’s the dough in action. I love seeing these kind of pictures because I feel like they give me good insight into the texture of the dough (holy #playdoughnerd alert). Anyways, it squishes…
It cuts…
And it’s really soft.
Here’s the recipe…
Soft & Squishy Gluten Free Play Dough
- 1 cup of Bob’s Red Mill Gluten Free All-Purpose Baking Flour | CAN (packed down into the measuring cup as much as possible)
- 1/4 cup of table salt
- 1 tablespoon of cream of tartar
- 1 tablespoon of vegetable oil
- 1 tablespoon of glycerine
- a couple of drops of liquid food colouring
- 1/2 cup of boiling water (measured in a dry measuring cup – as in the same type you’d measure flour in)
- 2(+) tablespoons of cornstarch
Measure out the flour, salt, cream of tartar, vegetable oil, and glycerine into a large mixing bowl. Give the mixture a really good whisk.
Add your food colouring to the measuring cup you’ll use to measure your water in. Top the cup up with boiling water. (By adding the food colouring to the water measurement, you prevent adding too much liquid to your play dough – especially in cases where you’re adding a good amount of dye to achieve a more vibrant play dough colour.)
Pour the coloured water into your dry mixture and mix it super well with a wooden spoon, banging it off every once and a while. You want to incorporate all of the dry mixture into the dough here, which may take a little bit of effort. You may feel like your dough seems too dry or too wet to become a good play dough here, but don’t worry – trust the process. :)
Leave your semi-mixed dough on the counter to cool for 5 or so minutes.
Afterwards, dump the mixture out onto the countertop and knead it really well. Probably a picky #playdoughnerd thing, but we have granite counter tops and I much prefer kneading our play dough on a wooden butcher block or cutting board. At this point your dough will feel too sticky, but not to worry. (I feel like the wooden work surface helps cut the stickiness a little bit, which is part of why I find it helpful.)
Once your dough is well-kneaded and uniform, remove any dough from your hands, give your hands a good wash, and dry them completely.
Now measure out your 2 tablespoons of cornstarch either onto your work surface or directly onto your dough, and knead some more. You want your play dough to eat this extra cornstarch up. This should take care of that stickiness, but add an additional tablespoon if you feel like you need it (we tested this recipe 5+ times and 2 was our magic number each time).
And that’s it! You’ve got gluten free play dough!!
When it’s not in use, keep it in an air-tight container or bag at room temperature (away from heat sources) and hopefully it’ll last a long time.
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The other night, I had the absolute pleasure of joining several other Vancouver mom bloggers at 
Here’s our lineup of ingredients…. Pecans, dates {soaked in water}, coconut, raisins, sea salt, cinnamon, coconut oil, and vanilla. Now, I have to say that the original recipe includes coconut manna (also known as coconut butter) and not coconut oil… In fact, our healthy eating specialist explained that coconut oil is just the fat squeezed out of the coconut meat, while coconut manna is the coconut meat and fat combined, making it much more nutrient-rich. The trouble is, our local grocery store doesn’t carry coconut manna, so we had to improvise. While maybe not as healthy, the recipe still turned out great!
Anyways, onto actually making the cookie dough boys! First up, we drained {almost all of} the water our dates had been soaking in and blended them in our food processor. (Word to the wise, be sure your dates don’t still have the pits in them before blending. Oy.)
We processed them until nearly smooth, but not perfectly pureed. Because it was such a small batch, it did take several rounds of stopping the machine, scraping down the sides, and then doing it again, but that just meant more jobs for my little helper, which she of course loved.
With the date paste saved in a separate bowl for later, Miss G added our coconut and pecans to the food processor. Call us lazy, but we didn’t even wash out the processor bowl in between as it seemed like sort of an unnecessary step.
Then we pureed the coconut and pecans until they were meal-like.
Next up, Grae dumped all of the other ingredients (save the raisins) into the food processor with the coconut/pecan mixture.
Then we processed it all until it started to come together in a mass.
Here’s what it looked like when done.
The last step was to mix the raisins in by hand.
With our dough complete, we rolled it into balls using about a tablespoon of the mixture at a time.
And because Miss G is no longer a huge fan of raisins, before mixing them in, we set aside a part of the mixture. To set Grae’s balls apart from the other, she rolled them in coconut, which was a lovely addition.
The verdict? Delicious! They’re sweet and satisfying just like a good dessert, but come sans all of the sugar and fat regular desserts have. A definite success!
