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Is Your Child Playing With Gluten Free Play Dough?
Published 20 September, 2006
TweetDoes your coeliac child get to play with non gluten free play dough? Chances are, unless you made it yourself with gluten free flour, the playdough will contain a high percentage of wheat flour. As most kids invariably like to put things in their mouth, you could be unwittingly allowing your child to eat gluten.
Gluten free playdough, luckily, is easy to make, so here's my recipe for gluten free play dough.
Makes enough to keep a small one happy for ages.
400g (1 cup) of rice flour plus 400g (1 cup) of cornflour OR equivalent amounts of any gluten free flour
400g (1 cup) salt
4 teaspoons of cream of tartar
800 ml (2 cups) water
2 tablespoons vegetable oil
Food colouring
In a large saucepan, mix all the ingredients with a whisk to get rid of any lumps.
Gently heat up for 5 minutes or so, stirring to make sure no lumps form (just like making a roux!) and eventually the mixture will become firm.
Allow the mixture to cool slightly, then knead the mixture for a couple of minutes, to ensure there are no lumps.
You can now start playing with the gluten free play dough! Any creative masterpieces can be left to air-dry for a few days then painted with kid-friendly non toxic paints.
As this mixture contains a huge percentage of salt, it will keep for a few months in a sealed container, and better still, will taste so disgusting, your child will be dissuaded from eating it.
You can now rest easy knowing that your child is playing with celiac friendly gluten free play dough, (plus give yourself some super-parent points for being so hands on!) Remember to give this recipe to your nursery, so they can make gluten free playdough too.
Tip - I keep my nursery supplied with gluten free flour, so they can make fairy cakes and other fun stuff without me having to worry.
