Playdough recipe

: Make warming spices playdough for fall using this simple playdough recipe. We made cardamom playdough, cinnamon playdough and cloves playdough.

Fall has officially started here in the Northern Hemisphere and finally the weather has cooled down a little. It was time to whip up another bactch of playdough and this time we used a simple playdough recipe to make warming spices fall playdough. We used 3 simple spices : cardamom, cinnamon and cloves. For our whole collection of playdough recipes and playdough play ideas visit our category page.

Cardamom playdough recipe

I can’t believe how we have never used this aromatic, wonderful spice in our play recipes before. I often replace cinnamon with cardamom in my tea and it tastes fantastic. [ Affiliate link to cardamom- click on the images to check out the spices]

You can easily use cardamom powder for this playdough recipe. Since I buy all these spices in bulk, it will be a waste to buy the powder while I have the pods sitting in the pantry. I gathered a handful of the whole cardamom pods and gently tapped on each of them to loosen the pods. Split them open and collect the actual black spices inside. The fresh, black, round or oval ones give the best taste. I try to choose the nicest green pods as possible. Oftentimes you will find dry, flaky shapeless seeds inside. They are still ok to use in the playdough recipe but don’t give the best aroma.

Removing the spices from the pods is a GREAT fine motor activity for the little kids. My 5 year tried it for a while- as soon as the newness wore off she left of course. I think the kids will have a great kick out of tapping on the pods ( use a small toy hammer or a heavy spoon)

Once we collected some of the spices, I ground the black seeds in a small spice grinder and made  a coarse powder.

The next spice we used for this playdough recipe was cloves. Cloves are pretty common. I took a handful of them and ground them into a fine powder.

I modified our fresh flowers playdough recipe to make the warming spices playdough.

With a little food color the playdough comes together really great!

Cinnamon doesn’t need any introduction. I used store bought cinnamon powder for the playdough recipe.

I set out this aromatic spices playdough invitation to welcome fall. Check back tomorrow to see how we played with it. Ooh the kids made some wonderful creations.

Warming spices playdough recipe

• 1/2 cup flour
• 2 tbsp cardamom powder (minimum- vary the amount based on preference)
• Few drops of food color
• 2tbsp salt
• 1tbsp oil
• 1tbsp cream of tartar
• 1/4 cup (or a little over) boiling water.

If the playdough becomes too loose and pliable with excess water make sure you add a little flour and then store it. We store in a air sealed bags (Ziplocs). Any air tight container should work.

For cloves playdough recipe and cinnamon playdough recipe, use the same measurements and replace cardamom with the cloves powder and cinnamon powder. We went with 1 tbsp of cloves powder and 1 tbsp of cinnamon powder. The amount of spice is clearly based on preference.

To see how we created and played with the play dough and spices visit our play dough play : Spices and play dough post.

Thanks for reading

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