creating with your little sprouts: salt-dough play cupcakes

My daughter is getting a play kitchen for her 2nd birthday, and we decided to whip up some play cupcakes for her to “bake” with her sweet new setup. We used a small muffin tin that came with a kids’ baking set (from bed bath and beyond) and some easy salt dough.  Great for a snuggly weekend activity with your little sprout.  Here’s the scoop:

Before you begin – the baking portion of this project takes about 3 hours, so we broke this activity into two days, baking & painting.

Basic salt dough recipe (enough for 9 mini cupcakes and a little extra): mix 1 cup flour, 1 cup salt, 1/2 cup warm water. Mix and knead until you have a nice smooth dough. Salt dough can be colored with food coloring (add to the warm water before mixing) or tempera paint, but we left ours natural.

1. Prepare 1 batch of salt dough, form into small balls and squish into greased muffin tin.  Make the balls large enough that some of the cupcake crowns over the surface of the tin.  (Although the dough is perfectly kid-safe and technically edible, it is extremely salty, and probably would cause an upset tummy if too much is ingested.  So be sure to watch your kids (and pets!) to be sure that not too much of the dough gets eaten.

2. Bake (in muffin tin) at 200°F for an hour, then carefully pop the “cupcakes” out of the muffin tin and place on an ungreased cookie sheet.  Bake for about another 2 hours, checking every 30 minutes for doneness.  (You’ll want them to be solid, not squishy anywhere.)  Ours took about 3 hours.

3. Cool.  These keep their heat for a while, so be sure to keep your little sprout’s hands away until they’re all the way cool.

4. Decorate.  We used some kid safe, non-toxic acrylic paint, but you can color these with tempera paint, markers, glitter, etc.  After painting ours, I let them dry and topped them off with a coat of Mod Podge to keep the paint from chipping and making a mess.  You can also color the dough before baking (read above) for added cuteness.

5. Play!  The hardened dough is pretty solid, and should withstand drops and spills (ours dropped within about 40 seconds of being played with, and weren’t damaged at all.)

Want more ideas for creating at home with your little sprout?  Check out our homemade crayon how-to!