Vanilla Surprise Cake Playdough (Celebrating Our First Year)

Today is our one year blogiversary. One year of writing, posting, picture taking, and more. One year of sharing things we love to do often, are just trying for the first time, and things that become new favorites. One year of learning, for both me and the kiddos as we all explore new things (including how to make this whole page work.) What started out as something fun has blossomed into something I hope we stick with. There is still so much more to learn but still a lot more we want to share too.

Looking back over this year to date we have had 10,442 views, 127 posts, and found 134 fans on facebook. A few popular posts over the year have included our Love Bugs, "Swimmy" Sponge Painting, and our Seed Exploration. A few of our personal favorites include our Alphabet Adventures, Raspberry White Chocolate Muffins, Rockin' Robin Footprints, and our New Year's Bags for the Whole Family.

I can't wait to see where we go in this next year . . .

In honor of the one year blogiversary today we created Vanilla Surprise Cake Playdough. And although I didn't tell the boys why we were pretending to make cakes, they loved the theme of the play for the afternoon.

Big Brother has loved doing cake playdough play since we made our Chocolate Cake Playdough last year. 

This recipe is also a cooked playdough recipe. I had a box of cake flour which is no longer in date. Rather than throw it away, I decided to try it in playdough. It worked great, although I had to change the quantities a little bit. It was a very soft playdough and easy to mold. 

Ingredients:

1 and 1/2 cups cake flour

1/2 cup salt

2 tsp cream of tartar

1 cup water

2 tbs. vegetable oil

3 tsp vanilla

Directions: 

Mix the flour, salt, and cream of tartar in a large pot. 

Mix the water, oil, and vanilla together in a bowl or measuring cup. Slowly pour into the pot and stir. 

Cook over medium heat, stirring constantly, until the dough forms into a ball. 

(Side note: I did notice this dough seemed to take a little longer to cook, but keep stirring it will come together!)

After it forms a ball put onto a flat surface and knead gently until smooth and soft. 

The Surprise:

At this point I decided to add a small surprise for Big Brother. I divided the dough in half. Using one half I slightly flattened out the dough and added two tablespoons of rainbow nonpareils. Without kneading the dough I gently folded up the sides and smoothed it out so it looked like a regular ball of playdough. (Unfortunately the camera batteries died right as I snapped a picture of these steps and I lost the picture.)

I set up the dough in a tray with candles, pipe cleaners, beads, and candle holders.

Big Brother got to work creating his cakes. He was surprised to discover the rainbow sprinkles inside the  dough!

He loved adding the different decorations and candles. 

Little Brother even used a small piece and tried putting in a candle a couple of times. 

When we remixed the playdough the colors swirled, like it was marbled. Although over time the colors will probably completely mix, for now it was still really pretty. 

We made one more cake and even pulled out some party supplies.

Happy Birthday Kitchen Floor Crafts! 

Our birthday wish? 

We hope to keep blogging for at least one more year!