Mother saw something on the tv a few weeks back about making bath bombs, and suggested I had a go. Guess what she’s getting for Mother’s Day?

Let’s start with the basics: Bicarbonate of Soda, Cream of Tartar
These react together with water to make a fizz. And have a habit of lurking at the back of cupboards.
Then something to smell: Rose essential oil. A light oil for skinly kindness: Almond oil. Pretty in pink water: Red food colouring. And finally something to bind it together: Witch Hazel.
In an easier to read form (with numbers too):
4tbsp Bicarbonate of Soda
1tbsp Cream of Tartar
1tbsp Almond oil
5 drops red food colouring
5 drops rose essential oil
10 drops witch hazel
Silicon heart cupcake moulds

(Optional: Four borrowed children. To help mix, and generally make a mess. If you go loopy and put the children actually in the bathbombs, then when the policemen come, you’ve never heard of me, or this blog, ok?)

Mix the Bicarb and Cream of Tartar. Add the food colouring, essential oil, almond oil, and mix well. Use the back of a fork to smush all the bits together until you get a fairly consistant colour throughout. Add witchhazel, and mix madly, until it feels like damp sand, suitable for sandcastle building. Pack into mould as tightly as you can squish and leave somewhere dry and warm overnight. Wrap in tinfoil/similar, and keep dry until time for usage.

This is simple, and was fairly successful. We made three batches of this which filled the four hearts, and kept the kids amused for all of 20 minutes. We were able to turn them out about 4 hours later.
They fizzed quite well, as long as the water was nice and hot, but it was a bit oily for my liking.

I went a bit mad, and bought some things from bathbomb.biz including some Citric Acid, and some smellies, and new moulds.

So, this time my ingredients list is more complicated so I’ll do it in bits.

Basics:
8oz Bicarb
4oz Citric Acid
1tbsp Almond oil
1/2oz Cocoa butter (melted)

I mixed this together first then split into several bowls.

Each bowl had around 5 drops of essential oil, and 8 drops of colouring. I made each one different to make stripy bath bombs. I added a spoonful of dried lavendar flowers to the purple, lavendar scented bowl, and a spoonful of dried pink heather flowers to the pink rose scented bowl.
One bowl I left un-coloured, which was peppermint scented.

I then sprayed witch hazel to each bowl, mixing madly, as this made them start to fizz, until they were damp sandlike, before packing the mixtures into the mould. I tried adding some dried flowers to the bottom of a mould first, to make it look pretty; it has worked ok, but could be better.

My results were much more promising, even if they did expand in the damp air. The second batch, made later when I wasn’t making jam at the same time, didn’t expand nearly as much.

My love of all things stripy took over, so I have:
1 large white and green peppermint bath bomb
3 small blue lavender bath bombs
1 stripy pink and purple rose and lavender bomb
1 large lavender and rose bomb
2 stripy lavender hearts

I quite like lavender-scented things. I hope everyone I know does too.