My kids love playing with playdough and I like them playing with it!  I think it's a great outlet for creativity and a great teaching tool for letters, numbers, adding, etc.  The usages are endless.  However, I can't seem to be able to keep my kids from eating the darned stuff.  I make homemade playdough which consists basically of 1 cup of flour, water, food coloring, oil, cream of tartar and 1/2 cup of salt.  The salt is the thing that my kids love.  SO...I've tried adding a little bit of cayenne pepper thinking that the heat would keep them from wanting to eat it.  Well that didn't seem to work.  They ate it nonetheless.

Yesterday I made a new batch and figured I'd put in as much cayenne as I did salt.  That way it would surely be too hot for them to want to eat it.  My friend and her kids (3 and 5) were over and she thought it might not be a good idea if they happened to rub their eyes or anything with it.  I thought about it and came to the conclusion that I didn't think the cayenne would be that strong to hurt their eyes or anything but it might help convince them not to eat the playdough.

Well....about two minutes into playing with the playdough, my friend's 3 year old promptly called out, "Juice!  Juice!"  At first we just thought he was thirsty but then remembered the playdough and asked him if he'd ate some of it. "Yeah" was his reply. 

I was thinking, "Ok...this is good.  They're going to learn that eating the playdough tastes bad." but then about another two minutes later Ethan started crying that his eyes were hurting and then he got louder.  I promptly got him a wet cloth to hold over his eyes and we packed up the playdough.  He settled right down after I gave him the cloth but now I'm back to square one. 

Does anyone have ANY suggestions on how to make the playdough taste gross without compromising the texture and safety??  :)