Kool-Aid and Jell-O coloured (and scented) cloud dough

While Valerie and Nico were busy with their highly successful cloud dough (or “warm snow”, as Nico calls it), I went into the Glittering Muffins test kitchen to see, if I couldn’t whip up some colours and scents to add to the otherwise white and rather blah mix, once more going with our trusted Kool-Aid as magic component. To get the basic recipe, it is as easy as can be: Take 4 cups of flour and 1/2 cup of baby oil (basically any other oil works, too, we will not give any guarantees that motor oil will give the same result, though, you should stick to vegetable or canola oil).

So as they were busy, I borrowed one cup of the mix and tried to go red with Cherry Kool-Aid powder. After one packet did not yield a strong difference (with the exception of the awesome cherry scent), I added a second one and arrived at an ok shade of pinkish red, which probably would have gotten some stronger, if I had added another one, but I figured that for the experiment two were enough.

Next up was green and Lime Kool-Aid powder (and yes, another cup of borrowed dough from Valerie and Nico). Here it took me actually three packets in order to get a somewhat ok shade of green, after that the dough turned a little too powdery and I would have had to add more liquid, if I wanted to continue adding more powder, which I didn’t. In the middle of this one I actually had to make a quick run to the grocery store to get more green Kool-Aid, since we had run out… Talk about dedication to the cause, eh?

I had wanted to try to colour the cloud dough with blue as well, but could not find any Blue Raspberry Kool-Aid, so I went to explore the store a little and the only thing I could come home with was Blue Berry Jell-O Mix. Now I’ve never dealt with Jell-O powder (no kidding here), so this was a little bit more of an experiment than the Kool-Aid, so I stepped into the unknown, so to say. And it would turn out to be several steps actually, with varying success yet at the same time surprisingly similar results.

Version number one took 2 cups of flour, 1/4 cup of baby oil and two tablespoons of Jell-O powder, the second of which contained five drops of water and mixing/kneading. Result was somewhat pale, so I figured to try something different…

Version number two also had the regular base of 2 cups of flour and 1/4 cup of baby oil, but I mixed one tablespoon of powder in with the oil before dumping it in and gave the second tablespoon ten drops of water, result still was pale, not much different from the first one.

For version number three I mixed the remaining two and a half tablespoons of powder that were left with the flour before adding the oil and quite frankly, the difference again marginal, so not quite sure what else to do, so let’s try the probably most traditional way, which is…

Food colouring! And here things started to go awry, because the results deteriorated quickly. Dripping in 10 drops of food colouring brought some nice, strong colour, but with the ick factor that wherever the food colouring hit the flour, it would bind and then despite consistent kneading would not mix with the rest, so I ended up with very pale cloud dough with stronger specks of blue. Not all that bad looking, but unfortunately the bluer pieces also had a different, harder consistency, so they did not play well with the rest of the dough, so that didn’t work.

So the next try was to put the food colouring directly into the oil and go for blue liquid to go into the flour and go for the gold, eh, well, stronger blue, but the food colouring wouldn’t even mix with the oil to begin with, so that was a dud from the start…

So Kool-Aid still seems to be the best bet to bring some colour and awesome scent to your cloud dough, with cherry being the strongest. I’ll see, if I can dig up some of the Blue Raspberry Kool-Aid and continue to experiment with it, but for now, these are my findings!

If you do this, we’d LOVE to see a photo of it. Email it to us or post it on our Facebook page. We’d love to do a Facebook album, a Pinterest board and a page of your creations

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