I figured as long as I was making them, I’d do an instructable on them.

So, in case anyone else is carb starved and must have easy to make bread, I give you:

How to make traditional baguettes by hand.

Here’s a slideshow of how to do it from my flickr stream.

So, if you’ve ever wanted to make your own decadent chocolate bath melts, here’s step by step directions on how to do it!

Thanks everyone who voted!

Especially since you can make your own for pennies.

Phase One:
1 part Baking Soda
2 parts Hot Water

Phase Two:
1 part Vinegar
Essential oils to scent preference. I recommend 1/2 tsp per gallon or less. Lavender is great, grapefruit, lime, lemon, and lemongrass are my faves currently.

Procedure:

Use a container that is double the size of the ingredients. Put it in the sink or tub in case of spillover.
Mix the baking soda and water, stir till the powder is dissolved (mostly dissolved, you’ll likely have some grains left).

Add the vinegar. Remember that baking soda and vinegar react by fizzing, (remember all those volcanoes in elementary school?), hence the recommendation of a large container.

Once it’s stopped fizzing, pour into clean jars and close. Shake jar before use. Use by adding 1/4 – 1/2 cup in the rinse cycle.

There’s been a lot of buzz about in the industry about Argania Spinosa Kernel Extract and Cecropia Obtusa Bark Extract. Argania is derived from the kernel of the fruit of the Argan tree, Argania spinosa, and native to southern Morocco. It tightens skin immediately and obviously. Cecropia has been shown in studies to reduce cellulite and tighten skin.

The supplies of these materials are limited, as they come from protected species, and all harvesting must be done sustainably and under strict control. The ingredients I’m using in the formula test come from Laboratoires Serobiologiques, via Cognis

I decided to make a mango eye butter.

Ingredients Phase One – %

Water – qs

Lecithin (emulsifier) – 1.5

Ingredients Phase Two

Mango butter – 5

Shea butter – 4

Hemp oil – 4

Palm oil – .5  (1/2)

Ingredients Phase Three

50% blend of water and Argania Spinosa Kernel Extract – 5

Cecropia Obtusa Bark Extract – 3

Procedure:

1. Disperse Lecithin into the water at 50°C with stirring. Mix homogenously.
2. Melt P2 to liquidity. Add into phase I while mixing until a uniform emulsion is formed.
3. Continue mixing until temp drops below 30°C.
4. Add phase III while stirring when temperature drop below 30°C.

The blend turned out nice and fluffy. It holds air well, keeping it from feeling as dense as butters tend to feel. Melts almostly instantly at skin temp, becoming an easy to apply oil/serum. The botanicals blend well, adding a slight coffee tint, and almost imperceptible aroma. I took some of the batch, added it back to the mixer and incorporated a small amount of lavender and ylang ylang essential oils, which rendered the aroma of the active botanicals invisible.

So, the botanicals work in formulations like I would expect something with their density and weight to behave. Now, only time will tell if they work as advertised. I’ll keep you posted.

Working with small batches is often trickier than doing the huge batches I often do. But doing small batches lets you get all kinds of creative. Best of all, if you make a mistake, you’re not tossing out hundreds of dollars in materials. It’s fairly easy to “rebatch” a mistake batch when it’s a small batch, where as when you’re staring at 50 pounds of ruined soap…well, let’s just say it gets daunting.

This recipe I designed to fit some groovy little bundt cake molds that I found. Each one holds about 1/4 of cup, and there’s 12 of them. This batch size will also work well in silicon muffin tins, or a small silicon bread pan. (I despise lining boxes, so I use silicon whenever possible.)

Let’s get started!

Ingredients:

• 6 ounces – Coconut Oil
• 6 ounces – Palm Oil
• 1.5 ounce -Castor Oil
• 8 ounces – Olive Pomace
• 3 ounces – Canola

• 3.63 – NaOH (Sodium Hydroxide / Lye)
• 8.5 ounces Water

• 2 tsp Sweet Orange Essential Oil
• 2 tsp Green Tea Essence
• .5 tsp Lemon Essential Oil
• .25 tsp Nutmeg Essential Oil
• .25 tsp Cinnamon Essential Oil
• .5 tsp Clove Bud Essential Oil

• .5 tsp Ground spices consisting of clove, nutmeg, allspice and
  cinnamon.

Recommended tools:

• Big Ol’ Pyrex cup
• mason-type jars or glass bowls for NaOH/H2O
• stainless or silicon long handled spoon
• silicon scraper
• stainless steel (or silicon) whisk
• scale (accurate to at least .00 oz)
• candy thermometer
• microwave (not necessary, but easier)
• mold (mould)
• rubber gloves

Please note that for this project, I do not have my faithful assistant, Igor. This is NOT a project for kids. Lye is very dangerous, and children should be kept out of the area where it is being used.

Assemble your ingredients and tools. This batch moves fast after step two, and you don’t want to be running around looking for stuff. 

Melt oils in microwave (about 2 minutes on high). Measure out your water into one bowl/jar. Measure your lye in a different, very dry, container.

While your oils are melting, pour NaOH into water. 

NEVER EVER NEVER pour water into lye. That would be bad. Crossing the streams bad. 

Wearing your rubber gloves, use the long handled spoon to stir the lye and water together into a milky emulsion. Do not breathe the vapors. The lye water will get hot. Quickly. Normally I don’t recommend glass with lye, but mason jars should be more than strong enough for a batch this size, and stainless pitchers are hard to find. However, for safety, I recommend that you do this step at the sink, and let the lye cool in the sink, rather than the counter.

While the lye is cooling, retrieve your now melted oils. If they aren’t melted, stir and nuke in 30 second increments until it’s all liquid. Sprinkle ground spices into warm oils.

Now let everything come to close to room temp, which will take between 30 minutes and 1 hour. You’re shooting for a temp between 80 degrees and 110 degrees F. Take a break, read a book, catch up on email, take over a small country, whatever works for your schedule. Keep in mind that you can always warm the oils, and it doesn’t matter what temp the lye is as long as it’s cooled down below 120F.

Once everything has reached the right temperature range, add the essential oils to the oils and stir. We’re adding the EO at this stage because it’s the processing on a batch this small goes really quickly, and adding the EOs after the lye may cause the batch to seize.

Slowly pour lye into oils while stirring with a whisk.

Whisk emulsion together, stirring until you reach trace, which is the stage where the soap mix is thick enough that the whisk will leave a trace when stirring.

With this batch, trace happens in minutes. Once it’s tracing, but before it gets much more solid, pour into molds. Gently tap molds to release any air bubbles.

Cover molds with cling film. Press along the soap surface to smooth and level your pour. Find a level surface that’s relatively undisturbed.

Place a towel, then the molds, then fold the towel over the molds to completely insulate the soap.

After about 30 minutes, you can see the soap start to “gel”, as the saponification process gets going. Your soaps will feel very warm at this stage.

This is an example of “full gel”, about 1.5 hours after pouring.

Let the molds sit undisturbed and insulated for about a day. When the soap feels solid, you can peel the molds away from the soap, leaving you with this fantastic sweet spiced orange tea bundt cake.

I thought it was missing something, so I added some icing by mixing titanium dioxide with glycerin and poured a drizzle around the cake.

For this recipe, I’m using ingredients that are pretty common, or easy to find in most areas. Essential oils can be found in small amounts at places like health food stores and craft stores often carry essentials and fragrances. Just make sure, if you buy fragrance oil, that you’re buying “body safe” oils and not stuff for candles.

So, let’s start with a basic recipe in two parts.

Dry ingredients:

• Baking Soda – 8 ounces
• Citric Acid – 4 ounces
• Corn Starch – 4 ounces
• Salts – 4 ounces ( in these pictures, I used Dead Sea Salts, but mineral salts work too, and are easier to find and significantly less expensive.)

Wet Ingredients:

• Water – .75 tbsp
• Essential or Fragrance Oil – 2 tsp (for these I used a Ginger Peach.)
• Oil – 2.5 tbsp (I used cherry kernel, but any light vegetable oil will work.)
• Food coloring – 1 or 2 drops. (Your color will look very dark in the emulsion, but will be light in the fizzies, so as to not leave rings around the tub. For this batch I used one drop red and two drops yellow. The final result will be very light peach.)

Step One:

Begin by putting all of your dry ingredients into a big bowl. Glass is best because it’s non-reactive. Whisk or pestle those pesky clumps out. You want a fairly smooth consistency throughout the entire mix.

Step Two: 

 Blend your wet ingredients together. I usually use a small jar and shake it up. Don’t worry about separation too much, you’re not going to get a full emulsion. Then, while whisking, slowly add small amounts of the liquid to your dry ingredients. Here we see my faithful Igor prepare to pour.

If the mixture starts to foam, you’re going too fast. Quickly whisk the reacting ingredients into the nonreactive part and you should be able to stop the reaction. I add about a teaspoon at a time. When all of the wet ingredients have been added, you should have a mixture with the consistency of slightly damp sand. It should clump together.

Step Three:

Once your mixture is together, you have a pretty limited amount of time in which to get it into molds. To create the giant Soapy Hollow ball of bath doom, I use round christmas tree ornaments that were designed to be filled with goodies. To do a three-dimensional bomb like these, you pack each side, then overfill a tad and the center and press the two sides together. It takes a little practice to get a feel for how much “filling” you need, so don’t get discouraged if your first couple fall apart. Here we see Igor holding a filled ball.

Step Four: 

You don’t need to leave them in the mold for very long, and in fact can tap them out as soon as you fill them. These are four bombs we made with this batch.

You can use all sorts of things to make your fizzies; muffin tins, ice cube trays, candy molds, Aunt Magnolia’s denture case…whatever makes you happy. This batch didn’t make quite enough for five bombs, and it started reacting, so I quickly stuffed what was left of the batch into my “bath cookies” mold. When using objects that surround the seltzer mix, the mix must stay in the object until dry, or it will crumble when you try to take it out. This is what the bath cookies look like after spending the night in the mold.

Step Five: 

Once they are completely dry, store bath bombs in an airtight container or bag. High humidity will make them activate. Because we used oil and water and no preservatives, you want to use them within about 6 months. Assuming you can keep them for that long. Igor demands payment in immediate fizzy baths, but you may have better luck actually getting to *use* yours.

When you’re ready to use one, just drop it into a warm bath, and relax.

Fortunately, PMS is not a stranger ’round these parts, so I’m prepared. I’ve got four PMS blends that I keep in the studio for just such an occasion. (I have four because I tend to pick the one that smells best to me on a given day.) These blends work well as massage oils, they can be made into spritzers by switching the carrier oil with witch hazel, they can be put in a room diffuser or worn as perfumes.

PMS Blend One: (This is my fave, and the blend I use in Lunar Garden soap)

• Grapefruit – 4 drops
• Clary Sage – 4 drops
• Ylang Ylang – 4 drops
• Geranium – 5 drops
• Carrier oil – 5 ml (1 tsp)

PMS Blend Two: (Note that bois de rose should only be sourced from sustainable growers, and Lemon can be substituted for Melissa.)

• Bergamot – 4 drops
• Fennel – 3 drops
• Bois de Rose – 4 drops
• Melissa – 3 drops
• Carrier Oil – 5 ml (1 tsp)

PMS Blend Three:

• Bergamot – 6 drops
• Geranium – 6 drops
• Palmarosa – 7 drops
• Carrier Oil – 5 ml (1 tsp)

PMS Blend Four: (I think this one works best in a diffuser or a tart melt, as some people have skin allergies to spicy oils.)

• Lemon – 5 drops
• Chamomile – 3 drops
• Geranium – 6 drops
• Allspice – 3 drops
• Clove – 3 drops
• Carrier oil – 5 ml

But why tempt the fates when you could just smear yourself with mustard?  Folklorist swear by it.  I personally wouldn’t let anyone slathered in condiments wander around the good furniture, but I’m picky that way. Folklore also suggests baking soda compresses, bathing in goat’s milk, and taking an aspirin. All of which have their merits, as does a strong martini.

I keep a couple of things around in case one or all of us at the Hollow find ourselves abundantly blessed by Apollo.

• Aloe Vera plants.  Easy to grow, almost impossible to kill, best thing in the world for any kind of burn.

• Rose Hydrosol:  It smells good, it feels great, it helps cool the skin…and you can make desserts with it.

• Cucumber water: in a covered steamer with about 2 quarts of water, steam 3 or 4 sliced (unwaxed) cucumbers for 5 minutes.  Let the pot cool, and all the condensed water return to below the steamer basket.  Strain water into containers and freeze. (I use ice cube trays, then dump the cubes into gallon zipper bag for easy retrieval.)   Remove from freezer as needed for sunburns, refreshing drinks and a salad spritzer that will keep your greens looking fresh for much longer.  (If your cucumbers are waxed, peel them first, the wax compounds can be kinda spooky.)

• Lavender Oil: .33 ounces pure essential oil, .67 ounces light, cold pressed oil like apricot kernel, evening primrose, cherry, etc.

• Cocoa butter, shea butter, and mango butter with or without essential oils feels great.  Keep in mind that unless you’re buying them locally, in many cases you don’t want to ship those butters during the summer.  The radical heat changes during the shipping process can make them icky.  Nobody wants that.

• Blue Chamomile oil is another soothing oil for burns, but it’s prohibitively expensive.

• Bergamot oil is great for burns, but the high content of bergaptene can cause photo-toxicity. Bergamot and sunlight together are contraindicated.  It is advisable to keep treated skin out of the sun, and to use it in concentrations of less than 1 %.

• Tea Tree oil has often been recommended, and it is a fantastic oil for a lot of things, but in practice, I’ve never seen a significant difference on sunburns with tea tree.  Actual burns, where there is an infection possibility, then absolutely tea tree should be added to the blend, but for a non blistering burn, I’ve not seen a difference.

• Mint compress and reduction:  Take a handful of fresh mint (any variety) and toss it in to 2 quarts of boiling water.  Remove from heat, and let steep for 30 minutes.  Strain mint tea into a container that can be refrigerated.  Scoop boiled mint leaves into cheesecloth and allow to cool.  Once cool, press the compress lightly onto the burn, refresh as necessary with your cold mint tea.  Also spritz the tea on to burn areas for a quick skin cooling effect.

Remember, your best defense is a good sunblock, but on those occasions when even the SPF 70 lets you down, here’s some quick remedies,  a lot of which involve stuff you already have around the house, and none of which will make neighborhood dogs follow you around because you smell like a bratwurst.