Scented Playdough

So on a mission tonight to make scented playdough with what I had! Ended up with, coconut and ginger spice, vanilla, peppermint, and in the process came up with what may be a serious time saving new recipe!

I made Coconut playdough using body shop coconut body butter, and this is how I came up with a way of making playdough that I can't believe I hadn't realised before (There are plenty of examples of this method over the internet now I have searched). I simply followed the recipe that I posted a few days ago, but substituted the oil for body butter. In order to ensure I didn't have clumps of butter I boiled the water and added the body butter to that and then added each of the ingredients to that, in order to avert any potential chemical reactions (you never know). When I finally added the flour to my shock it simply got thick very, very quickly and hey presto playdough, no cooking at all. I hope it will keep the same as the cooking, but whatever I will defiantly be using boiling water again.

The coconut dough has turned out a VERY different consistency/ texture, rather crumbly and almost like short crust pastry, I am wondering if the body butter acted like shortening? Who knows?

In order to check that the crumbliness wasn't due to the boiling water method, I made vanilla playdough using the same method but adding the boiling water last (this way children can join in the making and adults simply add water). This time the consistency was not crumbly at all, so must be due to body butter?

The ginger spice one was the basic playdough recipe (on a pan- pre coconut revelation!) and simply adding copious amounts of dried spices, the ginger seemed to turn it the best colour so it has more ginger in!

Lastly pepermint, as above but adding pepermint and blue colouring to preferred strength after cooking, more flour was added to deal with the extra liquid.