Let's make Heart Shaped Cupcakes without using heart shaped tins.
How about making heart shaped Valentine cupcakes and only using what’s in your kitchen? Use your cupcake tins, gather some marbles, use a box cake mix and frost. No marbles, no problem. Let’s use aluminum foil and roll up some marble size aluminum foil balls to accomplish the same outcome? Put the cupcake liners in your muffin tin as usual. Place your aluminum foil balls between the muffin tin and the cupcake liners. This makes the heart shaped indent. Fill halfway with batter.
Bake as usual. Frost to your heart's content. Several blogs use marbles and have long descriptions, but it’s as easy as realsimple.com says. Let's have some fun and stay on a budget. All we used was our imagination.
Note: The finished cupcake photo is from google, but it is a FLASHBACK. That looks like my Mother's cupcake tin. Love it!
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Grandmas Follies takes the mystery and expense out of Bath Bombs.
How did I decide to make bath bomb A dear friend has been dealing with a very difficult situation over the past two years and she’s handling it like a superhero. She just bought a small house, which needs some TLC and we wanted to give her a relaxing gift to tide her over. The book Where the Wild Moms Are with some relaxing bath bombs seemed like a good gift idea, but the bath bombs are so expensive. We wanted at least a dozen. That’s when I thought just how hard could they be to make? What!! Not hard at all and much less expensive.
Curious about the book? You may have heard of the children’s book Where the Wild Things Are by Maurice Sendak. Well, the fun Moms and Mums versions are available too. Where the Wild Moms Are and Where the Wild Mums are is for exhausted Moms and Mums because they deserves a break. If you don’t find them locally, they're linked here with Amazon for you.
OK, Let's get started. Bath Bombs are an expensive treat, and does anyone really know what’s in them? Well, I was shocked to learn that everything I needed was either in my kitchen or bathroom: baking soda, Epsom salt or sea salt, cornstarch, coconut or olive oil, food coloring, citric acid, essential oils, and water. The recipes vary slightly from blog to blog, but I finally settled on a basic recipe to begin. It's from the Homemade for Elle Blog. (photos are from Homemade for Elle)
BASIC BATH BOMB RECIPE Ingredients 1 cup baking soda ¾ cup citric acid ¾ cup Epsom salt ¾ cup cornstarch 20 drops essential oil ¼ cup coconut oil 4 teaspoons water
Instructions
In a large bowl, combine baking soda, citric acid, Epsom salt and cornstarch.
Mix well to get any clumps out. Add essential oil and coconut oil and give it a good whirl. Slowly add in water, stirring after each addition. It’ll fizz a little as you add in the water.
You can divvy this mixture out into ice cube trays, different molds, or use a meat baller to form balls. You can even freeform them with your hands, although they might not look as nice.
Allow bath bombs to sit for 24 hours before moving or storing. YES, you can do this. Make your own "feel good" or "time out" bath bombs.
I started with lavender essential oils and a little blue tint. You can change the colors, fragrances, add ground herbs and petals, or change their shapes. Be creative. At the end of this post, you'll find blog links for kid and adults recipes, feel better recipes, recipes to clean your dishwasher and toilet, etc. The molds I chose to used. I decided to buy the Healthy Home Helper’s food grade stainless steel molds in several sizes because I wanted to make gifts. Lots of gifts, and they needed to look professional. If I was doing it for myself or family only, I could skip this expense. The other readily available bath bomb molds are plastic, but reviewers said not to buy them because they crack under pressure.
The key to making a good bath bomb is the ingredients and pressing the ingredients in as tightly as possible. You can skip the expense of molds. Tightly pack the ingredients into ice cube trays, cookie cutters, measuring cups or use your hands. Here is a link showing you this method. https://www.google.com/search?q=making+bath+bombs+without+a+mold&oq=making+bath+bombs+without+a+mold&aqs=chrome..69i57j0i22i30l6j0390l2 UPDATE: Since I wrote this piece in the Grandmas Follies Newsletter, I've made several batches of Bath Bombs. The gifts were a wonderful success and my personal stash of bath bombs keep disappearing. Can you believe I'm getting requests? This could be a very doable little business. Be sure to see the links below for many relaxing recipe suggestions.
Making bath bombs is easy and affordable when you have the right ingredients and a little guidance. Here are three resources to get you started. 1. The DIY above where no mold is needed, 2. Healthy Home Helper and 3. Homemade for Elle. This is all you need. Healthy Home Helper, who's molds I purchased, also has a complete e-book with 12 original recipes, troubleshooting guide, and lots of insights. Here is the e-book link: https://981c9a71-0879-4371-938c-6e80efab844d.filesusr.com/ugd/4c6d2f_f9c5066a21d647cb92afc57a465c66c6.pdf Homemade for Elle has recipes for kids and adults, and very good suggestions. I found this most helpful. https://homemadeforelle.com/25-diy-bath-bombs/
I hope you take an afternoon to make your own bath bombs. I completely enjoyed doing it, love using them, and will continue making them as gifts. It's amazing how many friends and family members are waiting for my next batch, which I think may be the Milk Bath Bombs. I hope you have fun too, and most of all enjoy your time outs!
P.S. The entire process was easy except citric acid was out of stock in my area. I'm sure it was a supply chain issue so I ordered it from Amazon and kept things going.
