Chocolate Coconut Sugar Scrub

I have been working on some sugar scrubs this week and I have made some that I think are unique. One of my favorites is the chocolate coconut sugar scrub. It is made from unrefined coconut oil (retains the lovely coconut scent), sweet almond oil, demerara sugar, and a bit of chocolate fragrance oil. This is such a yummy scent, it reminds me of a candy bar! I love that I was able to get half of the scent from the coconut oil. This helps to keep the product even more natural by eliminating some of the fragrance oil.

Getting the ingredients out.

 I first measured out the oil and sugar. The coconut oil was then gently melted in the microwave.

Mixing the scrub

 The sugar was added to the oils and mixed. Then the fragrance was added and mixed into the scrub.

In it's pretty little container

I packaged the scrub into cute 8 oz containers. No preservative is needed in this scrub as it does not have any water in it. Since the scrub will be used in the shower, you may want to scoop a bit out with a clean spoon instead of your fingers to keep out the water and any germs on your hands.

It looks delicious!

Since this is not an emulsified scrub, it will leave your skin smooth and moisturized. Scrub made from oil may leave your tub a little slippery, so you need to be cautious when getting out of the tub.

Cupcakes! Yumm...oh wait...this is soap!

I have been making some soap cupcakes as a special for Valentine's Day. I am preparing three different "flavors". They will be Dark Chocolate Raspberry (shown in this blog post), Coconut Lime, and Black Raspberry Vanilla. 

The cake part of these soaps is made with a dark chocolate fragrance and I darkened up the soap with a bit of cocoa powder. The frosting is scented with a sun ripened raspberry fragrance and the color is from a little bit of red clay. They are finished off with a touch of iridescent glitter to make sure that they sparkle.  I think that they really smell and look amazing! This was my first time piping soap and it was quite easy.  I think I may start making more of these! I have included a bunch of photos as I pipe on the last of the frosting. Enjoy!

Yum! Dark Chocolate Raspberry Cupcake Soap

Check out my lab jacket in this one!

Finishing up the piping

Added a little sprinkle of glitter!

It's the most wonderful time of the year!

Now that Thanksgiving has past and the days are getting colder, I have started think about the month of holiday parties I have ahead of me.  I like to bring a treat to the parties, so I have started making a list of deserts to make. This year Christmas will be hard for me. If I don't find a new job soon, come Jan. 1 I will be officially unemployed. While that in itself is sad and very scary to me, it is forcing me to be creative for Christmas. I plan to make a lot of my gifts and bake even more! So here is the first item on my list:

  

Salted Caramel Chocolate Shortbread Bars

I found the recipe on www.annies-eats.com. Go check it out! The bars look beautiful and extremely yummy!  I can't wait to make some this weekend.  I will let you know how they turn out!
 

Treasury!

My Chocolate espresso shea butter soap has been featured in an Etsy treasury. Check it out here and place a comment so that I have a chance of being featured on the etsy home page.

Chocolate Variety Pack

I made up a yummy chocolate themed gift basket. I am going to list it in my store in a bit. I have included a chocolate covered nuts salt bar, a dark chocolate and coconut soap, a chocolate espresso shea soap, and a cocoalicious vegan lip balm.

More Soap Porn

Another teaser of soaps that will soon be listed on at my store. This first one is a chamomile soap. It is made with some chamomile infused oils, chamomile EO, and a bit of ground chamomile for texture. This soap is called chocolate espresso. I colored the bottom with cocoa powder and the top with titanium dioxide. I love this photo...part of my payment to Dylan for his photo skills was that delicious espresso I made for the picture. We got a nice espresso machine about a year ago and have since turned into coffee snobs.
On the theme of taste hot drinks...this soap is scented with green tea and cucumber. (Okay okay...I would probably never drink a cucumber tea, but it smells amazing with green tea!) The green swirls are made with my favorite colorant, french green clay. I also sprinkled the top with some clay, spirulina powder, and sparkles for a little pizazz.
This beautify soap looks a lot like the chocolate espresso, but it is lavender vanilla. The color is not quite what I was going for, but I think it looks nice anyways. I had been hoping for more of a lavender color instead of the brownish purple I got. Ah well...it smells great.

Productive Weekend!

After having spent all day Saturday at a renaissance fair that Dylan's kung-fu demo team performs in, I was feeling the need to make LOTS of soap. So, Sunday I made 5 batches of CP, rebatched some shampoo soap that was soft, and made a batch of cream soap. It was a lot of fun! For the cold process soap I made them all with a blend of shea butter, olive oil, castor oil, palm oil, and coconut oil. For scents I made a vanilla, lavender vanilla, black raspberry vanilla, lemon poppyseed, and chocolate espresso. They all smell marvelous. The cream soap contained coconut oil, cocoa butter, olive oil, jojoba oil, castor oil, stearic acid, palm oil, and glycerin. For additives I included hydrolyzed silk protein, hydrovance, panthenol, kaolin clay, and calendula petals. The calendula petals provide a light yellow color which should look very nice once the glistening sheen develops in the soap. I will post picture of all the new soap soon!

Vegan Lip Balm

After many trials, I think I finally came up with a recipe I like for lip balm. I gave a tin to a friend and she liked it so much that she just bought a container to give to another friend. I really like the feel of Candelilla wax much better than beeswax. It seems to spread much nicer, though it could just be that I added extra liquid oil. Let's see if I can reproduce the lip balm. I am excited to try new flavors. So far I have made mango flavor and chocolate flavor. I have a few other flavors on hand that I try soon. How do you all get the lip balm sweetened? Do you add a sugar substitute of just get flavor oils already pre-sweetened?

Chocolate Covered Nuts Salt Bar

I recently made this yummie scented batch of salt bars. This is a fragrance blend that I came up with and I am really pleased with how it came out. When this batch was fresh out of the mold and just cut it had a nice swirl pattern of brown (cocoa powder) and white, but as time passes it is turning more of a solid brown. The swirls may pop back out after it gets wet, but we will have to wait and see. I tried a sliver of it in the shower yesterday and it had a great lotion like lather.

Ramblings

Well...I guess I have lagged. It has been too long since my last post. I have been working on some new items though. I have made a chocolate covered nut scented salt bar that I swirled (more like marbled) in cocoa powder. They smell delicious and have a great lather. I also made an ocean rain scented soap that I swirled in what was supposed to be blue but it turned a lovely shade of purple. Anyone else every have trouble with this? It was an FD&C colorant. I also just received my package of incense so that I can dip my own. I am pretty excited about making them.

On another note, I am really excited for Sunday. This weekend is graduation at Wesleyan and Ted Kennedy was supposed to speak, but now Barack Obama will be taking his place! So, I am really excited to hear him speak. I will try to take pictures to post.

Chocolate coconut bath melts

These chocolate coconut bath melts smell so delicious. I made them from cocoa butter and sweet almond oil and I scented them with a coconut fragrance oil. This bath treat smells like a yummie candy bar. I just toss one in a foot bath and relax. They leave my feet feeling silky. and pampered.