"Surprise" Transforming Cloud Dough Recipe

What’s inside: Soft & silky cloud dough made with simple household ingredients, with a fun “surprise!”

The story behind this cloud dough recipe is kind of funny — I actually thought it was a total fail at first!

A few days ago, my youngest daughter and spent the morning experimenting with slime-making. However, none of our recipes resulted in slime!

First, we created this color-changing, edible silly putty. TONS of fun watching the bright purple color develop as we mixed the ingredients! My 2-year old also enjoyed sneaking little bites of our putty after I told her it tasted fruity.

Next we swapped out a one of our ingredients from our silly putty recipe to see what happened. My daughter loved stirring the fluffy foam, but it didn’t seem to form anything that stuck together. So we set the bowl aside and headed out to run errands.

Imagine our surprise when we returned home a couple hours later to find our bowl of thick foam transformed into light, fluffy snow-like flakes!

These flakes easily mold together to create soft balls of dough, so we dubbed our creation “cloud dough.” You can break the dough down into flakes and squeeze it together again. Over and over for hours of fun! It’s silky soft and easy to clean too!

How to make “Surprise” Cloud Dough:

I’m writing this recipe out the way we did it, including letting it sit for an hour or so (this step might not take as long for you, but we left the house while ours set, so I didn’t time it exactly.)

This recipe takes a little more time than many of the “2 ingredient” cloud dough recipes you see online. But to me that’s the best part because that’s when our recipe magically transforms from a fluffy foam to a soft, moldable dough!

Speaking of, I really love the texture! Instead of “sandy” dough that falls apart easily, our cloud dough dough stays together when you mold it, until you intentionally break it apart.

Ingredients

1 1/2 cups corn starch
3 cups shaving cream
2 teaspoons liquid dish soap
1/2 cup water

*Optional: 1/2 large package sugar free Jello (for color)

Directions

STEP ONE: Add half of the cornstarch to a medium mixing bowl with half of the shaving cream. Stir together to combine (may still be lumpy at this stage).

STEP TWO: In a measuring cup, mix 1/2 cup warm water with 1 teaspoon dish soap. Add to the bowl with cornstarch and shaving cream and stir until smooth.

STEP THREE: Add remaining cornstarch, shaving cream, and dish soap to mixing bowl. Stir together until it forms a thick, smooth foam. Allow to set for about an hour; during this time the foam will dry until a soft cloud dough remains.

TIP: Don’t worry about the measurements being exact — as long as you maintain a general ratio of 1 part cornstarch to 2 parts shaving cream you should be fine.

Another note: Always supervise your kids when playing with this dough (or any slime, goop, etc.) Wash hands thoroughly when done. Some ingredients in shaving cream and/or dish soap may be irritating to sensitive skin.

Be sure to check out our super simple edible silly putty recipe too! (This one is perfect for toddler play or if you’re looking for a recipe that contains no soaps, glues, etc.)