Tutorials on soapmaking, bath fizzies, lotions and more
I finally had a cupcake! After a four week dry spell, our friends Jennifer & Scott had Cupcake Royale cupcakes at their wedding reception tonight. Bless them.
I devoured a Red Velvet cupcake as soon as it was polite to do so. I made sure I wasn’t the first one to take a cupcake from the giant stack of fluffy goodness.
I was the third.
The Red Velvet cupcake was so good that um, I had another.
I snuck up on the cupcake table in stealth mode. I didn’t go straight over. I talked to one group, talked to another group, did a side samba over to the table and quick as a jackrabbit, made my move!
I grabbed the Barbie Cupcake, did a graceful pirouette away and scurried off to the corner where I hid my face from the crowd and savored my ill-gotten gains.
I barely made it through the second cupcake. I felt a little green. But, I persisted (insert clapping and crowd cheers here). And, it was good.
My diet starts tomorrow.
Taking the basic chocolate recipe one step further, I tried White Sparkle Shimmer mica in the recipe to add texture and color. The mica mixed in easily. The recipe took a full 10% mica to show any color difference. With a dash of red, the color would be wearable on my washed out pale skin. On the lips, the brown color isn’t very deep or shocking, despite how the photograph looks.
The top kiss is a 2:1:1 ratio (2 parts chocolate:1 part beeswax:1 part jojoba).
The bottom kiss has 10% White Mica added to it.
This is a photo of the chocolate lip balm wiped off. It leaves just a tint of color.
Tomorrow’s post will have the final day including recipes for the winning Choco Balm!
Peg’s shop on Etsy is: aromaticessence.etsy.com/
Happy Saturday! It’s a rainy, overcast day in Bellingham but since that’s an every day event here, Chris and I are going about the day like it’s warm, sunny and beautiful.
We’re headed to a local park for a picnic (cooking the pasta salad right now). We’re also dragging kayaks along. I suspect that we’ll be the fools in the middle of the rainy lake, fighting the winds, all in the spirit of “Having Fun” and “Fully Enjoying The Summer.”
I’m excited to finish my posts on the Choco Balm so look for a few more of those over the weekend. That is, if my frozen hands can type after our rainy day kayaking foray.
Happy Soaping!
The baker of these Coconut Jewel Cupcakes says:
“From the Barefoot Contessa’s recipe. The only modification is the type of coconut (Dessicated Baker’s Coconut, not the moist angel flake-type), and the fruit jelly marshmallow on top.”
I’m drooling.
In my sugar induced high, I got sloppy. I picked up the boiling hot molten chocolate directly from the microwave. Ouch! It burned. I flung the scorching bowl. The aftermath was not pretty.
Shocked silence filled the kitchen. I turned, wide eyed, to my patient, loving husband.
When this photo was taken, he was muttering, “How did you get chocolate all up in the microwave door latch? That’s never going to come out. And, how am I going to clean all of the underside of the microwave? Hey! The chocolate is seeping into the grout!”I thought quickly. I’ve been cleaning the white grout in the bathroom for months with my nail polish remover. It has done an effective job. Our bathroom tile grout is sparkling and white. Nail polish remover would make this entire situation all better!
I sprang into action. I ran to the bathroom and fervently rooted through the cabinet, coming back to the kitchen in triumph. I silently got to work, scrubbing the chocolate grout. I felt elated! Finally, here was a way to redeem myself. If Chris saw how clean the grout was, perhaps he might even talk to me within the hour!
Within a minute, the grout was looking whiter. I set to work on the next patch. Chris sniffed the air and wrinkled his nose, “Do I smell chemicals?” He was genuinely puzzled. I tripped over my words as I explained that Acetone really seemed to do the grout cleaning trick.Silence. A puzzled expression crept over Chris’s face. Slowly, as though talking to a small child, he explained, “Honey, grout is fragile. It needs special cleaners.” With that, he dumped a bowl of soapy water over the entire mess, handed me a toothbrush and commanded, “Scrub.”Ohhhhhhhh… It didn’t seem the appropriate time to mention the bathroom grout and my pride in the Acetone-cleaned bathroom floor. So um, honey, if you’re reading this now? You might want to go check the grout in the bathroom.
Bittersweet Baking Chocolate comes in handy 1 ounce squares. You can use just a bit without ruining the entire bar of chocolate. Commercially purchased chocolate, such as the Green & Black and Vivian line, end up going bad if exposed to the open air too long. Be prepared to sacrifice for your Choco Balm by eating any remaining chocolate when using anything but Baking Chocolate. Traumatizing, I know. We suffer for our craft.
Making Choco Balm can be messy. Too much of the suffering (um, eating) of leftover chocolate causes sugar shakes. After one too many shaky mishaps, I tried a dropper. The opening was too small. The chocolate kept congealing in the teensy spout. More shaking and spilling ensued. Hint: Take a 3 ml plastic dropper, cut it off at the widest point and use this to draw up your melted, thick chocolate mixture. The opening is wide enough to take even the thickest chocolate balm. Rinse the dropper hose out with super hot water in between batches.
It’s advisable to have plenty of paper towels on hand. Oil and chocolate is difficult to get out of cloth washcloths.
This is a photo of the warm even look of the Green & Black Organic chocolate. It’s lip smackin’ good and provides moisture and protection on my lips.The recipe is:1 part Jojoba Oil
The hip gals over at Style Bakery turned me onto this fun idea – Mommy Calling Cards.
Fruition Designs sells 50 cards for easy playground swapping and sharing of numbers. When you’re balancing a baby on one hip and trying to hold onto a toddler with your other arm, reaching into your deep diaper bag to extract the one pen shoved into the deep abyss isn’t very practical.
Instead, whip out a handy card with your name, children’s names and contact information. Easy, cute, and colorful and you don’t have to worry about the looming mess in your cavernous bag.
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After the Double Boiler did not melt Hershey’s Chocolate successfully, I got impatient. I put 1 Tablespoon of Hersheys, 1 Tablespoon of Jojoba Oil and 1 Tablespoon of Beeswax (pre-melted) into a microwave safe bowl.
I shoved the bowl into the microwave for 60 seconds. My haste was not rewarded.
The stinking lumpy mass of goo that ensued was disappointing. My house smelled of burnt chocolate. I was stymied but regrouped and tried again with shorter microwave bursts.
It was with much excitement that I tried the melt process a second time. I stared intently at the chocolate goo whirring around in the microwave, stopping the process to stir every 10 seconds.
After 1 minute and 20 seconds, the batch with the Hershey’s had melted but was not incorporating. I stirred with more vigor. It held together better.
I triumphantly pulled out my frozen knife from the freezer. I plunged the cooled implement into the piping hot mixture. The chocolate, waxes and oils instantly solidified on the frozen knife. The insta-cooled balm was easy to spread on my lips, tasted delicious and the proximity to sugar made me euphoric.
I carefully poured the balm into the clear twist up tubes. There was some cackling with glee and delight as the chocolate started to cool.
The cackling turned to dismay as the Hershey’s concoction started layering, with the heavier waxes dropping out and the milk solids rising to the surface.
I had the privilege of participating in an experiment Entrepreneur Magazine undertook. They had four entrepreneurs wear pedometers (which, for future reference, are not fashion friendly) and log average daily steps. The magazine also made us keep a diet journal but that part didn’t make it into the article. Click here to read the full article and see which entrepreneur walked the most per day.
After all the supplies were assembled, I made a make-shift double boiler for the beeswax and the chocolate. In the past, I have exploded one Pyrex container and a microwave glass trying to melt beeswax in the microwave. I decided to play it safe and make a double boiler with an old mug.Chocolate contains a large amount of cocoa butter. Traditionally chocolate needs tempering in order to make sure it does not crystallize. When chocolate crystallizes, it looks white and cracked. It’s fine to eat but not the look that we are going for with our Choco-Balms. I made a tempering bowl for the chocolate.
The chocolate tempering bowl was a disappointment. The chocolate just sat and sat and sat. It got slightly mushy but never fully melted. In hindsight, I think this is because Hershey’s Chocolate doesn’t contain much chocolate. In fact, “chocolate” is fourth on the ingredient list. It comes after sugar, milk, and cocoa butter. For comparison, the two foodie chocolate brands I used had organic cacao, organic cane sugar and and organic cacao butter for their first 3 ingredients. Neither Green & Black or Vivians have milk solids in their ingredients listing. As it turns out, Hershey’s Milk Chocolate is not a friendly product to craft with because of the milk.
Given our Chocolate Lip Balm theme for this week, the above photo seems appropriate. For more fun food art, head to Splutch‘s site. The egg one is my fave.
