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Tonight after supper i finally embarked on a new project i've been plotting for a while - creating my own bath bombs. I seek to create lovely, soft & fizzy bath bombs, freeing myself from a dangerous dependancy on the oh-so-lovely Lush Butter Balls; i bought a stack in Victoria on our honeymoon last year, and even with careful rationing i'm running out.
I spent some time surfing various recipes on the web and eliciting advice from friends. I worked up the nerve to wander into our local herbal-witchy store, which is actually much cooler than it looks from the outside. (That would be the Scarlet Sage Herb Co., on Valencia Street.) I was unable to find a key ingredient at the Scarlet Sage, so i ordered my citric acid in bulk from Majestic Mountain Sage (and i couldn't resist some fragrance oils,too) and then put things on hold for a few days. (What is it with the sage names?) MMS had reasonable prices & speedy delivery, and their fragrance oils pleased even the notoriously nasally picky me. My box arrived on Friday.
Tonight i dove in. Some of the recipes call for corn starch, but i decided not to use it, on instinct. Later tonight i found an explanation - it supposedly helps them float better, but also can supposedly excacerbate yeast infections. Yuk. Score one for my instinct. I actually wound up using the simplest recipe i found: 1 part citric acid to 2 parts baking soda. Mix until smooth. Pretend you want a really nice cake or something. Drizzle in your fragrance, and mix well again. As i'm trying to replace the butter balls in my life, i ran a fork around the top of a container of cocoa butter to get tiny shards, and mixed that into my bowl, too. Spritzing small amounts of witch hazel with my right hand, and mixing with my left, i mixed and spritzed until the mixture felt like wettish sand. (Not soaked sand, mind you - damp sand. When you can crunch some into your palm, open your hand, and it keeps the shape, you're done spritzing.) I wound up using my cooking ring molds to shape the bombs (making biscuits, really), and had the most success unmolding them after about 5 minutes. I spritzed the tops with a tiny bit more witch hazel, and now they're drying.
I'll report back when i've done the alpha testing, and if they're ok, again after my beta tester has a run with them. This was lots of fun to do, and satisfying in a very third-grade-science project sort of way.
And a bonus photo, because i have it: last week's apricot-cherry pie. (It turned out pretty well for a danger pie.)
