Easy no-bake Halloween Playdough Recipe

This playdough recipe is super simple and so easy to make – I make it with my own kids all the time. It’s also taste-safe for littles who just can’t resist popping some in their mouth (it’s not for eating – but has no toxins in it if any does cross their lips!).

For me, the best part about this playdough is how soft it is. It’s so easy to make and you’ll probably have most (if not all) of the ingredients already.

All you need is:

1 cup of plain flour
1 tbsp cream of tartar
1 tbsp oil
1/4 cup of salt
Scents (we used cinnamon & nutmeg for a Halloween smell)
3/4 cup of water
Gel food colouring (optional – orange for Halloween)
Glycerine (optional)

Simply mix the first 4 ingredients (flour, cream of tartar, oil & salt) until combined. If you want to make it smell add your scents now. Mix it all together.

Add the gel food colouring (if using) to the water and then SLOWLY add the coloured water, bit by bit, mixing as you go – until you get the perfect consistency.

If you want it to be quite a glossy playdough then add a drop of glycerine to make it shiny.

Simply kneed it together and then enjoy playing! All 3 of my kids absolutely loved this Halloween playdough – the littlest (age 1) loved squishing it between her fingers and removing the toy snakes that I hid inside it. Mr 4 loved using it for imaginative play and opened his own ‘pizza shop’ and spent ages selling me pizzas (luckily he accepts Apple Pay!). And my eldest (age 8) was trying to roll out perfectly circular shapes before finding different items to cut perfect circles out of the dough. All 3 loved using the Halloween-themed cookie cutters to print and cut shapes out of the playdough.

There is so much to be gained from making & playing with playdough. Some of the key benefits are: