Post Punk Kitchen Forum

Does anyone have any good diy recipes for bath bombs, bath salts, or bubble bath?

I made some as xmas gifts last year with these recipes. I used tapioca starch instead of meringue powder & skipped the SLS. I also used food color gel & lavender essential oil instead of their color & fragrance. I got the citric acid from the homebrew shop. I almost burned out my mixer w/ the frosting.

http://soap-queen.blogspot.com/2009/03/ ... cakes.html
http://soap-queen.blogspot.com/2009/03/ ... sting.html



Bath Bomb Cupcakes by Don't Lose Your Lunch, on Flickr

Gorgeous!!

Laser Ox, those are awesome.

Starrynight87, bath salts are ridiculously easy. Just take epsom salt, or an epsom salt/coarse sea salt combo and add essential oil and food coloring if you want. No real measurements. I made some for a friend. I just filled an old cleaned olive jar with salt and added drops of lemon grass oil, blue, and green food coloring. Shake until salt is evenly coated.

So beautiful!

Those are sooo beautiful!

I wanna eat those, but I have a feeling that wouldn't go well.

I just attempted to make bath bombs via a Martha Stewart recipe and ended up with a crumbly mess. Now I have a jar of crumbly bath fizz instead, but I'm sure if I drop it by tablespoons into the bath it will still work. I used lemongrass, rosemary, and orange oil, and added a few orange tea bags. It smells so good!

I wrote a tutorial for bath bombs AGES ago and never got around to finishing it or putting in pics. they're pretty easy to make, I will try and find the instructions I wrote.

That'd be awesome.

OK, here it is...


Bath Bombs
Bath bombs really are easy. Basic proportions are 2:1 of Bicarbonate of Soda to Citric Acid (by
volume, not weight) then add your chosen additives. But to be a bit more precise, here is a recipe. I
used a UK metal cup measurer but the good thing about this recipe is that it doesn’t have to be 100%
accurate. If it’s too dry, add some more liquid, if it’s too wet, add 2:1 (by the tsp) of BS/CA until it’s
right.

Just remember, it’s 2:1 bicarb to citric acid and adjust the wet ingredients from there.

Ingredients:
1 cup - Bicarbonate of Soda
½ cup - Citric Acid
1 tbsp almond oil (or other odourless oil)
Witch hazel or water
¼ - ½ tsp skin safe fragrance oil or essential oil (depends how strong your fragrance is, I just drop it in
until I’m happy)
Optional: soap colorant (food colouring works too!)
Grated/chipped cocoa butter or shea butter
Flower petals
Skin safe glitter …. Etc

Equipment
Large mixing bowl
Measuring cups and spoons
Silicone muffin tins or other moulds
Wax or greaseproof paper for drying
Spray bottle for the witch hazel/water

Method:
Grease your moulds with a little (tiny) bit of almond oil.

Mix together the citric acid and bicarb until well combined and there are no big lumps of bicarb.

Add in the almond oil and fragrance (you can add the fragrance to the almond oil and mix first to
ensure it distributes better but you don’t have to!). Mix mix mix. Add any additional additives and mix
well again. (I like to add in around 1 tbsp chipped cocoa butter – basically the dregs at the bottom of
my bag of cocoa butter, but you could grate it!)

Scrunch a big handful and if it holds together (it shouldn’t be too wet), it’s time to start moulding. If
not….

Then get your spray bottle and fill it up with water or witch hazel (I usually just use water!) and start
spraying. Use your hand to mix it in and after every couple of sprays, scrunch a big handful again.
When it starts to hold together as above (don’t soak it!*) you can start moulding.

*You don't want to let it get too wet! If you do, it can start to 'grow'. No biggie but it will affect the overall look of the bombs.

Pack it into the moulds. Press it down REALLY hard and press as much mixture as you can get in
there. Pack it in tight now**! Once packed in, smooth it down on the top as much as you can (totally
unnecessary but stops you having so much of a wonky bottom! – a spray or two of water/witch hazel
can help this).

**If you don't pack it in tight then there is always the chance that they will just crumble when you de-mould them. So really squish it in that mould!

If you can, leave them in the mould for an hour or so then turn them onto wax/greaseproof paper and
leave them out in a cool dry place overnight to dry fully. If you don’t have an hour (or have more
mixture than moulds) leave them in a minute or so and turn them out carefully.
Once dry they’re good to go!

Notes:
You can get citric acid in health food shops and home-brewing shops. But it can be pricey and you really want the stuff that is
finely ground (the stuff I found in my local home-brew shop was granules and needed to be ground up before I could use it). It
is cheaper to order it online and you can find it in bulk on ebay, along with bulk bicarbonate of soda.

Some recipes out there call for corn starch; personally I feel this does nothing for the recipe except bulk it out a bit so I don’t
bother with it. It also makes the bombs heavier and they sink, not that this is really an issue.

I am going to have to try these!