No-Cook Jello Playdough

I used to love Jello. As a kid, as a teenager, as a college student. L O V E. Somehow as an adult I've lost the love and oddly enough my kids don't like it either ... which isn't a bad thing considering its absolutely null nutritional value.

Today is rainy, gross and my kids have no school :|

Desperate for a diversion, I pulled out the ingredients for chocolate chip cookies ... and realized everything I needed to bake them was in the unwashed dishwasher. Huh. PLAYDOUGH! I could make playdough instead AND I wouldn't be tempted to eat it.

I've recently been sucked into the Pinterest universe and have seen folks linking to a Jello playdough recipe. Well alrighty then! Two sad little boxes of strawberry-banana Jello have languished in my cabinets for eons ... time to go, boys!

I was disappointed to see that the Jello playdough recipes were all cooked. I've done cooked playdough, and it rocks but it's completely not worth my spending extra spoons (I have severe fibromyalgia - read the Spoon Theory here ) just to get better consistancy. So I found this Kool-aid no cook recipe and decided to try it with Jello.

And here is what I did.

2 cups flour
3 tbl oil
1/2 cup salt
One 3oz pack of Jello
1 cup boiling water

In a large mixing bowl (or the bowl of your stand-mixer) Dump 1 cup of flour, the oil, salt and jello.
Stir lightly with a fork to blend.
Add boiling water (I nuked mine in a two-cup pyrex measuring cup for 90 seconds so I wouldn't have to measure boiling water) and start mixing until well blended.
Gradually add the last cup of flour. Mix until blended.
Turn out onto a large plate and spread out a bit, allow to cool a bit.

Some notes. It's crazy sticky until it cools, and then is still a wee bit sticky - cooling makes a huge difference. I made one batch this way and a second batch just dumping the flour in all together. The texture was WAY smoother on the first batch and the ingredients blended in easier.

I also tried adding yellow food coloring to the second give me an orange color. The strawberry banana jello made the playdough a gorgeouds light to medium pink. I had to add a HUGE amount of food coloring to change the color and then it went a bit neon. Moral of the story: not worth the effort to change the color. The kids grabbed the dough before I could snap a pic of the colors separately so all you can see of the pink is that bit in the middle but it was really pretty. Sigh.

Lastly, I think this recipe makes enough for one kiddo. I haven't tried doubling it  to see if the stand mixer bowl can handle that large of a batch, but it might. Derfinitely going to watch for Jello sales and grab some more for making playdough! It colors much better than food coloring in my opinion ... but then I'm apparently food coloring challenged.