MIX UP SOME CLOUD DOUGH FOR PLAYTIME FUN

I know my children are well and truly grown up, but this cloud dough is so much fun we've all been having a little play with the batch I made to see if it works. Cloud dough is mouldable, just like playdough, but it feels like flour and you can run your fingers through it and it will be soft and silky.

The kids (big and little) that played with this batch had a ball drizzling it through their fingers then making shapes with it. The boys even had a cloud dough castle competition!

Best of all, unlike play dough, if you forget to put the lid on the container it doesn't dry out!

Cloud Dough
You will need:
1kg plain flour
1 cup of baby oil

Directions:
Put the flour and baby oil in a large container. I used a four litre ice cream container to mix in so that it could also be the storage container.  Mix the flour and baby oil together with your hands until the dough will hold a shape when you squeeze or pack it together. This will take a long time - about 5 minutes so don't give up. Just keep on mixing and squeezing.

This dough uses baby oil so make sure your littlies aren't tempted to eat it. Baby oil is used in this recipe because food grade oils tend to go rancid - eww! If you want to use a food grade oil go ahead, just remember that you'll need to store your cloud dough in the fridge and it will only keep for about a week before you'll need to make a new batch.

You can colour your cloud dough. The easiest way to do this is to either add liquid food colour to the baby oil before you mix it into the flour or if you have them, add powdered food colouring to the flour before you add the baby oil.

I found the easiest (for clean-up anyway) way to play with cloud dough was to put it into a 7 litre tub so it didn't spill over the sides. Or just take it outside. Or put down a plastic tablecloth. I had dozens when my kids were little - they saved the furniture and the floors and made cleaning up messy play a breeze. You can find plastic tablecloths at $2 shops and every home with littlies should have at least one for messy play.