Salt Dough Baby Print Keepsake

Doing this salt dough bake keepsake was a little hit and miss throughout the day. I wanted to do some kind of keepsake too remember my baby's first Easter and thought it would be a family fun time. Which don't get me wrong even with minor struggles in the baking department we all had a blast sharing memories together as a family.

The recipe I used for this dough is one part water, one part salt and two parts flour. I did see other recipes with more floor I don't know if next time I try those and see how well it bakes.

I started with 2 cups of flour, 1 cup of salt and 1 cup of water. Your suppose to knead for about 10 minutes which I definitely don't think I went as long as I should've.

I rolled the dough out with a rolling pin to a quarter inch. That's when I got the family together and started to make the prints. Now not always easy getting prints off a 5 month old baby, but my husband and I together made a great team. I also want to add if you're getting a foot imprint make sure you wipe all the toe jam otherwise you get an interesting addition to your imprint.

Once I cut out around the prints I tried to use a spatula to lift the dough. But I must've had extra water on the counter so made it difficult. I ended up re-rolling in the pan into shapes and redid the prints.

For this bake I thought it would be more efficient if I put it in my air fryer. I put it on air fry setting at 140 degrees for a few hours. I was thinking the smaller appliance would work faster but it wasn't so near the end I turned the temperature up to 240 for half hour which ended up making the dough puff. Not what I wanted.

I tried again with more dough in an egg shaped. This one was easier to handle in dough form, even after getting the print. When putting it into my air fryer I set it to the bake setting instead at 190 for a couple hours. This time it did bake faster and more even. The air fryer setting mainly cooked the top and kept the underneath wet.

I left it to cool overnight that way I can paint it with acrylic paint. I'm thinking that I might try and find something to do a sealant coating to make it last longer. Even with all the hiccups this was fun and definitely gave some learning curves to go from for next time I do a project like this one.