All-Natural Play Clay

My kids love helping me in the kitchen, especially if it's making treats or crafts. Today we tried a recipe that I got off of the Family Fun website. It was a lot of fun and simple, too, because we didn't have to deal with a hot stove to make each batch of playdough, like our regular recipe does. I changed some of the recipe, so I could use ingredients that I have at home. I didn't have any beets or tumeric, and since we decided to make all of the clay more sweet smelling, we didn't make the paprika one.
Here is the original recipe and below it are my additions:

Ingredients:
1 cup flour
3/8 cup salt
1 tablespoon vegetable oil

Natural Dye:
Brown: 3/8 cup plus one tablespoon hot water and 4 tablespoons cocoa powder
Fuchsia: 3/8 cup hot beet juice (we used the liquid from a 15-ounce can of beets)
Orange: 3/8 cup hot water and 1 tablespoon paprika
Yellow: 3/8 cup hot water and 1 teaspoon turmeric

Instructions:
In a medium-size bowl, combine the flour and salt. Pour in the oil and your chosen natural dye, and stir well.
Knead the dough on a floured surface for a few minutes. If the clay is too soft, add a bit more flour.

We made the brown, which smelled so yummy, like brownies! Hard to resist eating it. :)
For the yellow, I used 3/8 cup of hot lemon juice, which didn't color the dough at all and didn't have a scent, either. I added a dash of vanilla and that did the trick. For the future, I will just add hot water to the dough and then the vanilla.
For the fuchsia, I thawed some frozen strawberries (about 1 1/2 cups) in a saucepan along with a 1/4 of a cup of water (I think that is how much I used. I am terrible about measurements!). I brought it to a boil and let them simmer until they were mushy. Then, I strained them over a bowl, and used 3/8 cup of the hot strawberry liquid to make the pink dough.
Instead of orange, we made purple, using blueberries. I used the same method as the strawberries.


With the leftover berries, we made smoothies!