Your Royal Blogstress: Dough Experiment 2 Galaxy Dough

Galaxy Dough

This is another very cool dough that is much closer to regular play dough than Cloud Dough. It is solid, not loose the way the Cloud Dough is. It is different from regular play dough though in a couple of ways. Superficially, it is a deep rich black because of the added black food coloring (you could also add blue or purple to it, but I didn't think it was necessary). It also has glitter. I added silver and iridescent glitter so it would be reminiscent of the stars. Compositionally, it is different than standard play dough, because it contains not only flour and water, but also a ton of salt, and cream of tartar. It makes it less dense, fluffier (although not fluffy, if that makes sense), less weighty, I suppose. Again, all of this reminiscent of space.

Nicholas loves learning about outer space and the planets, and astronauts are among his favorite professions to talk about, so I love that this could be applied to books, and outings, such as, the Air and Space Museum.

This did take longer in terms of preparation on my part, but not very long at all (15 minutes or so). But there is no clean up on the other end, after playing with it, like the Cloud Dough. It involves brief stovetop cooking, and the clean up of the pan afterward obviously. If you get a little of the dough stuck on the bottom of the pan while cooking it, soak it in very hot water with dish soap and it wipes right off (the same has been true of all of the doughs that I have made that need to be cooked on the stovetop). I thought it was well worth it though. I almost wish I hadn't prepared it ahead of time because I thought it was fun to knead the dough right when I took it out of the pan to get rid of some little unmixed bumps and more importantly, to add the ever essential glitter. The dough was nice and warm and I think that might have been another interesting sensory experience for Nick.

I broke out all of our books on outer space and read those to begin with. I gathered a toy space shuttle and astronaut, and Buzz Lightyear to join in on the fun. I also got out star and circle cookie cutters, and we made phases of the moon: crescent, half, and full moons, for example. We made Saturn with rings. And even when we were done, Nick enjoyed eating planets and stars in the Milky Way (Kix and milk in a bowl)- ha, ha!

What you'll need:

2 cups plain flour
1 cup salt
1 tbsp cream of tartar

2 cups of water with desired food coloring added (I added 1 small bottle of black). The wet food coloring will stain your fingers at this step (while wet). Once it is cooked, it does not bleed from the dough at all.
1 tbsp of cooking oil (vegetable or canola, for example)

Over medium heat, warm the water, food coloring, and oil. In a bowl, stir together dry ingredients, then add to water on stovetop. Stir with a spoon (wood or metal works fine, but metal is way easier to clean and won't absorb black coloring) until it gathers, take it off heat when it looks dull, and you can pinch it (carefully, it's hot) without it sticking too much. Take pan off heat, take dough out and set it on the counter to cool. Once it has cooled slightly, knead out little bumps or just to get the consistency you'd like.

If you don't plan on using it right then, it will keep in an airtight container for a few weeks. I wrap mine in plastic wrap, then put it in a zipper baggie.