DIY Play dough

For Mr. A's 2nd birthday, a friend of ours gave him a reusable grocery bag filled with the ingredients for making play dough, some food coloring and cookie cutters. It was a great gift and I loved it! She also left us with the recipe and I was a little nervous when I saw that there was cooking involved, but honestly, its super easy to make.
Here's the recipe:

2 cups flour
2 cups warm water
1 cup of salt
2 tablespoons of veg. oil
1 tablespoon of cream of tartar

Kool Aid or food coloring for desired colors.

I just threw all of the ingredients, excluding the coloring, into a pot and stirred it over medium heat. It cooks pretty quickly, so I just stayed closed and kept stirring until it pulled away from the sides and formed a ball in the center of the pot. I would recommend that you let it cook a little longer than you think you should, so its not sticky. The longer it cooks, the less sticky it will be (I jumped the gun on my second batch and it was a little more sticky). Once you think it is at a good consistency, let it cool so that you can handle it.

Before:

After:

I used my spatula to kind of cut it in quarters, and decided I would make 4 different colors. It made more than I thought it was going to.

We used Kool-Aid to color it because it also makes it smell amazing!! Mr. A's favorite part was pouring the Kool-Aid in the dough. 

Here are the final results: 

We used orange, cherry and watermelon flavored Kool-Aid and 2 packets per ball of dough. I wanted to see if the dough would look different with food coloring, so I used food coloring for the blue and it really didn't look any different. The kool-aid smells really good, so make sure you tell your kids not to eat the play dough! My favorite was the orange; it smelled amazing and made me want to drink a glass of Tang! 

This was a fun little project and you probably have the ingredients in your kitchen already! 

Have you ever made your own play dough?