Yummy Dough

I don’t class myself as a yummy mummy. I am in fact at the other end of the scale, what you could call a Slummy Mummy.

The dough was just like Play-Doh, so Harry and I made snakes, snails, butterflies, a snowman and flowers and laid them all out on the baking tray ready for cooking. Once the oven was hot enough, I put them all in the oven and hoped for the best.

I look for short cuts in everything in daily family life and if there is anything that can make my life easier I grasp it with both hands. So when I was offered the chance to review a box of Yummy Dough with the help of Harry, my 5-year-old son, I was a little concerned. Not only was I the least creative at school, I was the only person ever to fail home economics and this new product required both creativity and baking skills.

When I brought it home Harry’s eyes lit up and he immediately started badgering me to open the packet. Obviously I had to oblige.

I was met with ‘Let the Edible Universe come alive with your own creations’ on the box along with easy to follow instructions. I read them carefully as I wanted to make sure everything was going to go smoothly as there’s nothing more frustrating to a child than a make and do product go wrong.

Firstly we had to wash our hands - we didn’t want to be passing any germs onto family members who would be forced into eating the finished creations. Next we had to pour the flour mixture into a bowl and add some water. Once doing this, you can see the colour of the dough start to form. It then had to be mixed to make a crumbly mixture. Once the consistency looked like breadcrumbs, I started to knead it (Harry had already got bored of mixing). This kneading wasn’t really combining the mixture so I thought I would add a little more water.

Once I had done this the mixture started to form dough but it was too sticky. I looked for the packet for help, where I was told to add some flour. This seemed to work and I was left with a ball of red dough. Once I’d created one colour I had to do the same for the other colours; there are four in total. After what seemed like an hour (it had only been 15 minutes but Harry had asked me in this time whether it was ready yet at least 50 times) we were ready to get creative.

The dough was just like Play-Doh, so Harry and I made snakes, snails, butterflies, a snowman and flowers and laid them all out on the baking tray ready for cooking. Once the oven was hot enough, I put them all in the oven and hoped for the best.

After an agonising 20 minutes (I say agonising but again this was due to Harry asking me when they were ready yet over and over again), I could take them out of the oven. As I lifted them out, I noticed they had expanded quite a lot. It dawned on me that we had been adding self raising flour to the dough which I don’t think you were meant to do, but in our opinion they still looked great.

Obviously we wanted to taste them straight away, so we tucked in. I have to say I wasn’t over overly keen on the taste but Harry did seem to enjoy them. The dough just tasted of sweet vanilla, nothing too offensive but the texture was very heavy and quite chewy.

Overall this is a very simplistic and enjoyable product but I would recommend parents to prepare the dough first because it does involve a lot of mixing to get the consistency right. It did get the Harry seal of approval though, which is the main thing, but given the amount of adult participation needed and mess created, I don’t think we’ll be Yummy Dough baking on a weekly basis.

Rating 6/10