My Family Loves It

I decided to try a NEW art project for this post and its related to me recently starting to drink coffee (I’m 31 and never liked coffee but 3 kids make you tired enough to try it!). I had heard you could make coffee dough with the used grounds and I looked it up on the web. I found quite a few recipes but a lot of them used instant coffee, which I didn’t have and the idea of reusing the old grinds was nice (composting works too but the dough is more fun and hell I can compost the dough after too). The kids had so much more fun with this dough than I would have thought. While they were making it Ethan kept saying it was gross so I went with that and said it was gross dirt dough. They were excited! Once I kneaded it and handed it over things got better. It has a great texture and smell. They rolled balls, made snakes and then I got out the dinosaurs for them to make fossil tracks. Ethan wants to do this activity at his upcoming dinosaur party! John got in on the action while I took pictures of them playing forever with this new “dirt dough”. You NEED to try this!

Here is the recipe I tried:

Coffee Playdough (mix the following, after play it can be stored in a zip-lock bag):

• 1 cup flour
• 1/2 cup salt
• 1 cup used coffee grounds
• 1/2 cup cool coffee (more or less depending on how wet/dry the grounds are)

Here is a recipe I’ll try next time (you are supposed to let your creations air dry for up to a week with this recipe):

• 2 1/2 cups flour
• 2 1/2cups used coffee grinds
• 1 1/2 cup salt (I didn’t make this recipe because I didn’t have enough salt!)
• 1 cup sand
• up to 1 cup water (add slowly to above ingredients and use only as much as you need to get it a good dough consistency)

Here is another recipe I’ll try in the future:

Coffee Grounds Playdough
Ingredients:
• 1 cup coffee grounds (used, by dried out)
• 1/4 cup Salt
• 3/4 cup Cornmeal
• Warm water
Directions:
1. Lay grounds out on a cookie sheet to dry.
2. Mix grounds, salt and cornmeal.
3. Add warm water slowly while stirring until a dough-like consistency is achieved (it will be a grainy
dough)
4. Play with it as you would playdough

****So this is turning into some long post! In my web travels I found this site about uses for coffee grinds and now I want to start collecting them from coffee shops too (for my compost and so I can make a huge patch for the party)! I already collect other people’s bags of leaves in the fall to compost and mulch my garden with so why not add to my quirks and collect used coffee too!