Strawberries and Cream Play Dough Recipe

Make some gorgeously soft strawberries and cream play dough using this no-cook recipe with natural scent and colouring.

More play dough explorations have been underway in our house this week, this time with a deliciously fruity scent, perfect for making pretend play cup cakes and ice creams!

To make this strawberries and cream play dough recipe, we added two natural ingredients for both the colour and scents to our usual no-cook play dough recipe ( <– click link to find original instructions.)

We mixed the dry ingredients then split the batch in half, before proceeding with the rest of the recipe instructions.

With the first half we made the “cream”, by adding a few drops of natural vanilla extract at the very end.

With the remaining half we soaked a strawberry, raspberry and cranberry tea bag in the boiling water before adding it to the usual mix (any fruit tea containing strawberries as a main ingredient will do!) After it had steeped for a good 5 minutes or so, we simply used that water as our boiling water ingredient, and squeezed as much colour as possible from the tea bag too.

This resulted in two balls of play dough, both naturally coloured and scented and smelling like a sweet shop! Mmmmmm

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They were set out as an Invitation to Play along with little jars of candles, cup cake cases, star sequins and heart picks, a rolling pin and some empty toy  ice cream cones. They were also free to add whatever else they wanted from around the room.

The idea was for the play doughs to be mixed together slowly but surely, to create combined flavours and a subtle marbled effect. It looked lovely as they played and it was nice not to have to say “don’t mix the colours!”

Bean loved making cupcakes the most, repeatedly adding candles and asking me to blow them out after singing happy birthday to me. The play dough cupcake game has been our girls’ favourite since Cakie was 1 year old!

When the bigger girls joined the game they started to make ice creams and sold them in their play shop, with added chocolate flakes and sweetie sprinkles on the top. It made a lovely after school activity for them to wind down and relax together. Play dough is a great therapy tool!

The play dough smelt gorgeous and remained soft and fresh throughout the play. We have stored it in an airtight container for future play, where it should remain fresh for about 6 months.

How to make 4 minute, no-cook play dough recipe

See our A to Z of Play Dough Recipes and Ideas here!

And search our Play Dough archives here! (we’re a little addicted, incase you hadn’t noticed)

What they are learning as they play:

physical: fine motor skills, strengthening hand muscles, coordination, pinching, twisting, rolling, flattening etc

creativity: inventing their own games, using pretend materials to represent real items. role play, character play, storytelling, model making, combining materials, singing

Cakie: 5. 7

Pop: 4.1

Bean: 2.2