How To Make Colored Salt

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Concluding Modified: May 24, 2022 by

My kids love to play with dough. They don't care if it's commercial Play-Doh or bootleg play dough or common salt dough or flour dough or cloud dough or something else. They just honey dough.

I wanted to make them a different kind of dough since we make table salt/flour dough all the time. (I've seen this recipe chosen Salt Dough and seen it chosen Flour Dough in different places, merely I'thou going to call information technology table salt dough for the sake of this web log post.)

I decided the unlike element would be colour.

Coloring common salt dough is a tricky suggestion (at least, it is for me). If yous color it before mixing, information technology is all the same color. If you color it after mixing, it can change the consistency.

I have found that liquid colour (liquid watercolors and liquid nutrient coloring) dilute the dough and require more than flour which, in plow, dilutes the color. That is a frustrating wheel for me.

I haven't experimented with gel food color, but I think it might piece of work better.

This time, I tried powdered tempera paint, and I plant that it worked quite well.

In this case, information technology made my dough a little as well crumbly, but that was easy to remedy with just a lilliputian extra water. (Allie poured in as well much h2o, requiring me to add together more flour, leaving my majestic a niggling less royal than intended. Information technology still worked.)

When you lot first mix the colors, it has a pretty marbled advent like this:

Allie made herself a bracelet using the marbled dough.

Grace used her pink and purple to make a cupcake.

So they asked if they could brand footprints, which I thought was a terrific idea. They wanted to do it and then they could say they stood on the table, which I pretended was okay for a few minutes.

Come across in this photograph how the colors are starting to blend together, looking more similar a single color and less like a marbled dough.

After baking, the dough gets hard. We picked out some of the prettiest cooked hearts for special projects.

Like this necklace

Near of the hearts were solid pink (because of lots of playing and kneading after we mixed the colors). We took a agglomeration of these hearts and colored them with Sharpie markers to make a garland to pretty up the turtle'south tank.

Nothing is going to make his tank pretty, but the hearts are a festive addition. These are all colored with Sharpies.

Do your kids like to play with salt dough? Accept you ever colored information technology?

How to Brand Colored Salt Dough

Prep Time 10 mins

Total Fourth dimension 10 mins

4 cups flour plus some for sprinkling subsequently
1 cup salt
ane ½ cups common cold water perchance a little more than or a lilliputian less
Powdered tempera pigment It takes a lot of paint to make dainty, bright colors. I don't measure, but I would guess information technology's at least 2 tablespoons.
Rolling pin
Cookie cutters we used hearts from Amazon
Cookie sheet

Mix the flour and salt.
Add together in the water until the dough is moistened but not gluey. If the dough is gluey, add together a bit more flour to go it right. I use my KitchenAid stand mixer with the dough hook attachment for this footstep.
I always have to go back and forth between adding flour and calculation water until I get the correct consistency. Since yous're going to add powdery paint, it can be a little moist for now.
Separate the dough into 4 fist-sized balls. Return the starting time small ball of dough to the mixer and pour in the powdered paint. Utilise the dough hook to knead the color into the dough.
Play with the dough. If you lot mix the colors correct earlier rolling it out, you'll have a pretty marbled dough similar to the first photo below. If you lot mix the colors and and then play with it a while, you'll have a composite color like the later photos show.
To brand shapes, sprinkle work surface and rolling pin with flour. Roll out the dough to ¼"-½" and use cookie cutters to cutting the shapes.
Broil the dough at 250 for 90 minutes, until it is stale out just not browned.