Christmas cookies out of play dough

Day 3 in 12 Days of Christmas DIY Challenges was to bake something you have in your house already. I usually have basic ingredients in my kitchen but now I seemed to be missing all the key ingredients so this challenge really needed some thinking.

On Friday I was at home with my son, my daughter was in her pre-school and he was feeling a bit bored when his playmate wasn't at home. I thought that baking would be good thing to do but what to make when there is almost nothing in the kitchen?

Play dough of course! Or salty dough, magic dough whatever you call it. That definetely needs only the basic ingredients.

Here are the ingredients you need; flour, salt, some oil. Also you need water and can add any colouring you wish. If you have food colours, that's fine but also blueberry and cocoa work fine. Only note that those come with the smell and if baking with small kids they might eat the products. Though usually not twice, the dough has so much salt that it doesn't exactly encourage eating. Also, there is nothing poisonous in it so no harm done anyway.

The recipe is simple:

1 part of water

1 part of salt

2 parts of flour

oil

Mix water salt and flour, add colours. If you use food colours, it is easier to add in the water but the cocoa goes well with the flour. I had some food colours and used those. For a while I was a bit afraid that it wouldn't work as I had to mix the brown and the dough was first green,then violet but then I found the right amounts and made perfect brown. The "problem" was that there wasn't enough salt to make more and I actually wanted brown cookies for the challenge.

The dough can be worked with any kitchen tools you have as it is made with completely edible things.

Doesn't it look just like christmas cookie dough?

Of course you can make anything out of the dough; beads, baskets, play food etc. We made the cookies:

The dough can be used again if you don't let it to dry but we wanted to harden them. I was heating the house with our wood stove in the kitchen, I left them there to dry but the dough also drys and hardens in just room temperature, it just takes couple days depending on the thickness of your products. You can also harden them in the oven; 125 degrees Celsius, an hour or more.

Even on hot stove they took time to dry and even on the next morning they looked like this:

It seems that they didn't dry properly but they are hard enough to play with. I should have just used the oven... Now that they are dry and hard they can be painted with usual kids' paints, water colours aren't perfect, the water gets suck in the dough and tends to make it soft again. Anything else goes.

Not edible Christmas bakeries but perfect for kids' own play parties!