A Festive Hobby

The Totally Safe Dough Recipe:

Half the amount of salt to flour.
For example:
8oz flour – 4oz salt
Or
2 cups of flour to 1 cup of salt.
Use water to bind, the dough should be quite dry at the end but holding together.
If you have a mixer with a dough hook, that is best for blending.

There are two ways to colour the dough. One is to paint it after it has been shaped, though this leaves the parts that are hard to reach uncoloured. The other way is to use food colouring powder and blend it in with small clumps of dough. That way you can take from the green chunk for leaves, the orange chunk for fruit and flowers etc. I would recommend the food colouring for larger figures too.


Good utensils for shaping your dough into excellent trinkets for the tree or decorative models are:
The garlic press – ideal for hair on sheep or dolls.
Biscuit cutters – make a hole at the top for coloured string, add a little gold at the end for the tree.
If you are going to make a doll, then make the body parts first and cut the clothes out as one does with clothes patterns! This gives it fantastic shape.

Once you have shaped the dough it must be dried.
Arga ovens are best as they are low heat and economical. If your friends have one take all the pieces over in one go and leave them overnight to dry on a low heat.
For larger models and shapes the microwave is good as it dries the dough from the inside.
Dry on defrost, checking every couple of minutes to make sure it doesn’t blister up.


It is best to heat it up and then let it go cold again before the next few minutes in the microwave. You can try your own timings and learn by good old trial and error.
If you are going to use an oven for the drying put it on 130° centigrade – gas mark 8 for a few hours, longer for larger figures.


Enjoy the creative effects of painting for example: the shine on grapes with a lighter purple than the grapes themselves. Fari’s top tip is to use cloves as the bottoms of pears and apples.
Above all, enjoy what you are doing as it will come out in the finished product.

by Fari Bradley