With a little flour and salt, a couple of hours on a rainy afternoon, and four little hands you can make two fabulous dough art wall plates for Mother’s Day.

 

Here’s what you need.

 

All purpose flour, regular table salt, a large and small mixing bowl, measuring cup, mixing spoon, and water, flat plastic lids from coffee cans or tupperware (round or square), a rolling pin or plastic jar, aluminum foil, baking sheet, forks and spoons or something with a pattern, perhaps decorative buttons to decorate the border and a couple of your favorite children for the rest of the project!

Mix 1 cup salt with 1 cup hot tap water, which dissolves some of the salt.

Add 2 cups flour, mixing it until you get a granular consistency almost like pie pastry.

It will look gooey at first, then dry and crumbly once you begin mixing it into a ball, pulling in the drier edges that stick to the sides with the spoon. Keep pulling it and pushing the dough into a ball with the spoon or fingers until most of the crumbs have been mixed.

Dump this onto a clean dry surface and knead it like you would bread until you get a smooth but granular consistency similar to playdough.

This is enough for two 6″ plates.

I do not recommend doubling the recipe.

If you haven’t kneaded bread before…

Use the heel of your palms to push the dough in a downward and forward motion, then fold in to the center from the outside, push again, then fold from the tip of your fingers back towards you, and start again with the base of your palm. Push, fold from the sides , push, fold from the top, push…

Alright. Here’s the fun part.

We’re having fun here, so perfection is not the goal.

Once the dough is kneaded you can make all sorts of things. I’ll post pictures in a day or so of my twin grandsons making the plates I have described below. The oldest twin looked at the blob of dough I was kneading and called it potatoes. I replied that I don’t put my hands in mashed potatoes.

Press the dough onto the aluminum foil and roll it until you have an even surface less than 1/2 inch and more than 1/4 inch thick. For little ones you can do this inside the plastic lid with the rolling pin or jar until it’s even and flat. It will stick to the lid a bit when you pull the dough out, losing some of it’s shape. Place the warped circle on aluminum foil and fix the edges until you have the shape you desire. I prefer to roll my base directly on the aluminum foil and then trim the edges off. Older children may choose to do this as well.

Once you have an even flat shape you want on the aluminum foil, round, oval, or,  you can begin the decorating process.

It helps to show smaller children what you want them to do by by doing it yourself first. I let the twins play with it, giving them two directions. Sit in the chair and have fun. They made ice cream cones in the cups they had, pretending they were eating it. These little guys, nearly three, are a handfull, and getting them to pay attention is not easy. Letting them do what they wanted with it, naturally exploring texture and even taste, when I first made the dough, was helpful.  When I began to roll small balls and coils in the palms of my hands they stopped to watch, tried it themselves and decided they preferred playing as if it were ice cream filling the cups up again and again. When I started pressing dough into a lid the youngest twin finally did the same thing, even trimming off his edges. All this play is experimenting with these guys to understand what I can teach them and how much they can handle before becoming overloaded. We had to quit early and will return to the project after their naps.

So, by this time you’ve got the ball of dough. You’ve made a flat surface that is waiting for your creative touch.

Press a hand into the center. Or two hands if you made a larger base.  Once this is done you can begin decorating the edges. The tip or handle of a fork, the curve on a spoon, the pattern in a button, any number of things can be used to make an impression around the edge. You could choose to make a pile of pea size dough balls and place pearls around your work of art. When you add dough to the surface you will need to wet the surface first with a wet cloth. I’ve used a very wet but not dripping face cloth pressed across the entire surface. Do this before your hand print if you want the added texture. Any time you add dough to a surface you need a little dough glue or a wet spot.  Sometimes glue works best depending on what you add. For the pea size pearls I would use dough glue.

Make dough glue by adding enough water to a little bit of dough until you get a paste thickness somewhere between jam or gravy. You can apply this to the edges or where wever you want to add dough witht he tip of a spoon handle, a chopstick, straw or toothpick.

Remember to make the hand print before making the border. You can make coils for letters and add a name, a year, whatever you want…but for us it’s “HAPPY MOTHER’S DAY”.

Bake these in an oven at 350 degrees until a you see a light and fairly even golden brown color.  When you tap the thickest part it should have a dry hollow sound. If you get bubbles, which sometimes happens early in the baking process, pierce these with a toothpick and press them back down with a damp  cloth.

Have fun! Gotta run…the boys are up from their nap.