Foaming Bath Bomber Recipe

I would like to thank the creator of this recipe.  It is actually a very good recipe and does wonderfully well with embeds to make it spin and color.



Now we all know that bath bombs are tricky little buggers.  Some have issues with humidity making them warty and soft while others have no issues at all with that sort of thing.  Thankfully I am one of the lucky ones and never have that problem.  Now that being said this recipe has a lot of options.  I will put them in parenthesis so you know my alterations and they will be marked with red ink.


Dry ingredients:
30oz baking soda
16oz citric acid
2oz SLSa (you can leave this out)
2.7oz cornstarch (tapioca starch and arrowroot powder both work)
.4 oz clay of choice (I prefer Kaolin in the white variety)
Add dry colorant here. (Lake dyes are what will give you the color blast. Straight dyes as well)
 
Wet ingredients:
2.6oz cocoa butter (2oz without SLSa) (You can also use coconut oil 93degree at 2.3 oz)
.7 oz polysorbate 80 (.5 without SLSa)THIS MAY BE LEFT OUT BUT IT IS WHAT KEEPS THE BUTTER FROM FLOATING ON THE WATER AND COLORS FROM STICKING TO YOUR TUB BUT IT IS NOT A NEEDED ITEM IF YOU DON'T WANT TO USE IT. REPLACE WITH OIL OF CHOICE.
1.3oz Fragrance of choice (1 oz without SLSa) (i generally go by smell rather than amount)
.4 oz witch Hazel


Directions:
While mixing in a stand mixer or with a electric hand mixer slowly pour in the wet ingredients. Add liquid colors at this point. (I find that hand mixing works just as well and less mess)
Mix well this is very Important
It may feel too dry, it's not just mold and go.

If your mix starts to not mold a few things can be done.
First try cleaning out your mold.  Sometimes the mix can get sticky in there.  Clean it well and try again.

If cleaning your mold does not work, spray your hand with witch Hazel and mix mix mix. (witch hazel assists in the hardness of the bomb but 90% or higher alcohol works as well)

Try again.

Hint when trying to mold round bombs BE SURE to have something metal to tap the top/bottom and lightly around the ring to help dislodge any air pockets that may cause the bomb to pull apart and not stay around coming out of the mold. If you try to unmold and it wont EASY , STOP!!! Tap again!!

Rendering deer tallow. Aka. deer fat

I hope you all had a wonderful Thanksgiving with your loved ones.   Mine was 2 days of wonderful food and lots of great catching up with family I have not seen in several months.

Along with Thanksgiving... hunting season in Wisconsin is upon us.   Several hunter friends graciously brought me their fat from butchering.  Deer fat makes amazing soap so it is well worth the effort in rendering it.  I promised several people I would document the process for them so let the tutorial begin...

First you will need to get yourself some deer tallow.  Here is a small load that I picked up a few days ago.  7 grocery bags full of tallow.

The next step is going to be the worst part.  It is the cutting process.  Normally I would grind all this in a grinder but mine seems to be hidden from me at the moment so hand cutting it is. You want your pieces to be small so they melt down efficiently.  Mine are not all that great but hey...  7 bags is a lot of cutting. haha

 The next step is tossing it all in a pan to cook.  I prefer a roaster so that I can control the temperature better. Put the lid on and let it cook. DO NOT ADD WATER TO THE CUT OF FAT.    I do dry rendering so I do not add water to the roaster.  I let it cook just like you would if you were making bacon.  Let all that fatty goodness melt down leaving nothing but bits of cracklin's. Now is the waiting game.   I suspect this young hunter has little experience in butchering so you can see that it is not the cleanest of fat.  But..  Beggers can't be choosers so.. here we go.   There is hair and other debris that I did not get out.. That is okay. It will all be gone in a few hours.  This is a lengthy process. 

This picture below is after about 2 hours of cooking.

  

This pitcher has some goo in it.  I scoop some fat out and pour it into a pitcher with hot water in it.  You do not want to shock the hot fat or the debris will solidify with the oil.  You can see the separation of fat and water.   There is a nice dark line separating them.  That dark line is excess cooked blood and meat that is being suspended in the water.  This is what we want.   After it solidifies I will pop it out of the pitcher, scrape the bottom of the block of fat to get some of the gunk off and put the fat into a pot for washing.  Washing is basically a simple process of combining oil with water so that all the debris in the oil will sink into the water rather than being suspended in the oil.  Hence the "washing" of tallow.  If it is super clean tallow you will have to wash it less.  The more meat and gunk the more washes it will take.  Some people also use baking soda in their wash water.   I try not to do this simply because you will need to keep washing until all the baking soda is out of it as well.   I choose not to use it unless it is a very stinky tallow.

This is after 3 washings.  Notice how the clean it looks.  But it will still need 1 more washing to be perfect.

Here is a stack of tallow that is waiting for its final washing.

 

This tall stack is sweating after bringing it in so I have towels to absorb the condensation.

 

This is a pad of tallow that is going into the pan for its 4th and final washing.  I use 16 ounces of water for each pan of tallow.   Once this one is done it will sit on a drying rack so that all the moisture is gone.  Then it will be melted down and placed into molds.  

Here is the cleaned tallow in smaller containers.   I like to mold them into 8 and 16 ounce blocks.  It makes it easier when soaping time comes about. You already know how much each block is going to weigh and it saves you from having to scoop (or chisel it) out of a huge bucket especially if you keep it in the freezer like I do.  After I weigh them out I pop them in the freezer until they are solid.

This is a stack of molded tallow that is just chillin' out waiting for the rest of the deer tallow to be molded and added to the pile for a final count.  The eight (8) on the left are all eight ounces.   The fifteen (15) on the right are all one pound blocks.   So.. with a ton more to go I already have nineteen (19) pounds of tallow this season.  I have more to pick up next week so hoping to have this batch all done today :)

The competitive nature of making bath products

Oh lord. let me just say that some people in the bath & body community are really prize winners.   There is so much unnecessary competition that it blows me away.  I have always been a giver and the selfish nature of some of the newer soaper/bath & body makers (by newer I mean less than 10 years soaping experience) kills me.  Okay, so you have been making soap for what? 5 years or so.  Yup that surely qualifies you as a professional soaper.  Someone who knows it all and all your recipes are prize possessions.  Hate to break it to you but compared to my 20 years of soaping YOU are a new soap maker.  I see the same people posting pictures of their things over and over and get totally offended when someone asks them for the recipe or at least basic instructions. If you don't want people to ask for your recipe then stop posting pictures of your creations.   Pretty simple if you ask me.   Oh wait.  You don't really post pictures to inspire others, you post pictures so you get the almighty pat on the back and the "you are the Queen of soaping" speech.  Get the heck over yourselves.  I have been making soap for over 20 years and none of you are making anything new.  Nothing that hasn't been seen a million times before. NOTHING is original anymore.  With the exception of very few recipes or products, you are making nothing that is more special than anyone else.  Seriously.  If you were making something so dang special then guess what. YOU WOULD BE A HUGE PRODUCT LINE THAT IS DESIRED AND COVETED BY THE ENTIRE WORLD.  but guess what.  YOU ARE NOT.

Nothing makes me more angry than seeing someone bash a less experienced product maker because they think they are better than someone else.   EXCUSE YOU.  You are nothing special.  I mean nothing special to anyone other than the minions in your head and those that blindly follow your idiot ways.   You copy other peoples work.   You claim to have "invented" new recipes (based on the ingredients of other peoples work).  You also claim that your products are unique (again based on pictures you have seen of other peoples work).  Okay, well then.  I am happy you are so proud of your work (that was based on other peoples creations), but where does the superiority come in?  What makes you so special that you think you can treat others with disrespect?  Just curious.  What is the difference between you and I?  Well. honestly.  the difference is that I have no problem telling people that I got the idea for my creation off of a website, facebook post, pinterest or whatever else.   I have no problem giving credit to the person I copied it from.   You have NEVER done that as far as I can see.  All I see is you letting people believe you are an original, unique, creative person rather than letting them accept you for who you truly are.  An average joe just like the rest of us.

Now.  I was sent several messages via facebook messanger (actually 30 or 40 messages to be exact) by 4 different people who were offended that I am posting dupe recipes. The recipes I have duped are actually dupes themselves so where is the problem? These were NOT original recipes to begin with, so I do not understand the problem with me tweaking them to perform to my liking.  They are a dupe.. of a dupe.. of an original.  They were based on the ingredients used not the original recipe themselves.  I DID NOT post the actual recipes for anyone elses specific recipe.  I will also continue to dupe products and share the recipes I use with everyone freely.  Why?  BECAUSE WE SHOULD BE HELPING EACH OTHER SUCCEED RATHER THAN TEARING EACH OTHER DOWN. 

That being said.  I want you all to know that this entire thing did not make me angry.  My feelings were not hurt by this (I have pretty thick skin).  The best part of it all is that I KNOW I am doing nothing wrong in YOUR eyes because YOU do the same thing as what I have done here.  The difference is that YOU are profiting from someone elses work and I am not.   YOUR recipes are copies of other peoples work and creation.  So get off your high horse and deal with the fact that someone has the balls to do to you what you have been doing to others :)   Find your inner peace and love yourself.  Respect yourself and others..  Most of all please find happiness in your life and treat others with the compassion that you expect from others :)  Start giving credit to those who deserve it and stop trying to take the shine away from people.

Live happy my friends!