Hearts for the face

I like the heart shape.  Pretty corny, I know, but like the Barbara Carland romances that I used to read when I was twenty, I find the heart shape to be comfortable and soothing. So I'm always drawn to cookie cutters, picture frames, little boxes, ice cube forms and cake forms that are heart shaped and naturally I have used those for soaps.

It's not very practical, but I did make some heart shaped soaps by pouring the soap into a shallow mold and using cookie cutters.  It wastes a lot of soap, but I figured I needed some to rebatch anyway.  I thought afterwards that I should have made a small hole in them to thread a ribbon through, kind of like a Christmas decoration.  It could make a nice gift before the holidays.   I made the soaps with all sorts of nice oils for the skin although it's a bit high in Coconut oil.  But with all the butters I thought it would be fine.  I imagined that it would make nice facial soaps and therefore decided to make small soaps.  This is the time that I, rather optimistically, tried to use Hibicus as a colourant.  No red colour from that, but it does make a nice tan though!

I also poured some sope into an ice cube tray that I had picked up cheaply at a thrift store.  Same recipe, same tan colour.  It took forever to get them hard enough to be able to get them from the form, but when they finally popped out they looked nice.  I need to repeat this with a madder root colour and use a bit more of that than I did last time to get a darker pink.  But even if the Hibiscus didn't provide much colour to the soap it is supposed to have strong anti-oxidant qualities and it has been used to treat allergic exzemas and other skin conditons.

The recipe has some strange numbers, but I made it up as I went along and just wrote down what the scale said (rather than slavishly trying for an even number), but check it in a lye calculator.  I have no idea why I used such tiny amounts of Shea butter and Rice Bran (it's kind of like: Why bother?), but the soap is quite hard and really has the creamiest softest lather.  Quite lovely.

Buttery facial soap:

36% Coconut oil  -  180 g / 6.3 oz
26% Grapeseed oil  -  132 g / 4.6 oz
24.5%  Almond oil  - 124 g / 4.4oz
10% Cocoa Butter  - 50g / 1.8 oz
2% Shea Butter  -  10g / 0.35 oz
2% Rice Bran oil - 10g / 0.35 oz

Water  102g / 6.8 oz
Lye 70 g. / 2.5 oz

This time I used 8% SF.

I wouldn't necessarily repeat this recipe unchanged.  I would probably use less Coconut oil and a bit more Rice Bran oil.  Possibly up the Shea or skip it.

The photo: That retro yellow coffee cup and saucer with the bowl was a find that my daughter snatched up. I put my home made body lotions in nice glass bottles and store it on my night stand.  The doilies are destined for the wedding dress.  

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Rosemary shampoo bar for brunettes.

Rosemary has traditionally been used for dark hair and I remember using a shampoo in my youth that contained Rosemary.  So I just had to make a shampoo bar with rosemary if only for the wonderful smell.  Apparently the smell of rosemary helps memory and boy do I need that!

I have made this a few times and sometimes added a bit of neem oil to it, but this recipe is without that.  The neem oil was intended for exema in the scalp, a condition that some people in my family suffer from.  It has a very strong earthy, smokey scent that the rosemary masks pretty well.  When I use neem oil I have used about a tablespoon of it in a recipe this size.  Neem oil is also very good for insect control as in my insect spray (those mites are dead!) and for lice.  Althought I don't think the concentration in the shampoo is enough to combat lice.

Olive oil       40%    280g / 9.9 oz
Coconut oil  30%    210g / 7.4 oz
Castor oil     20%    140g / 4.9 oz
Sunflower oil 10%    70g / 2.5 oz

Water           38%    266g / 9.4 oz
Lye                           98g / 3.5 oz

5% SF.

To the sunflower oil I added Rosemary EO and added that at trace.
For colour I used the spirulina powder that I have.

I love to make teas with herbs that I grow and also infuse oils with herbs.  I do that regularly with mint and I have also used Thyme and a dying Rosemary.  I haven't had much luck with growing Rosemary so I don't have a good supply of it.  So many herbs are Mediterranean and don't like the wet weather here.  Plus, I think I must be slightly codependent because I tend to smother my plants in fertilizer and water them well and consequently torture and drown plants that prefer arid conditions.  I could buy Rosemary  at the store I suppose, but it's just not the same!  But I'm sure that this would be wonderful if made with rosemary tea and infused oils.

The photo: I bought this very ornate mask in Venice. I love masquerade balls, but my friends never wanted that back in the 70's. Now my daughters friends are always having dress up parties, but I'm not invited. Even so I lent her this to wear once.

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Oatmeal and cranberry cookies and homemade treats for the bitches

Yep, I have two bitches (and, no I'm not talking about my daughters :). They are Bichon Frise mother and daughter. The mother is 9 years old, she has a gentle personality, dislikes water and is a very picky eater. Her daughter jumps in the pond every chance she gets, is incredibly innovative in finding projects to work on (most involving destruction of some kind) and eats everything she finds. I used to be able to put dry dog food in a bowl and the mother would nibble when she felt like it. Not so with the daughter. I recently realized that she has been eating from mom every chance she gets and is quite overweight, so now she is on a strict diet.

I have gotten interested in making dog food at home and have made some experiments. Mom likes everything I make as long as it is freshly made, but as soon as it has been in the fridge, she looses interest. Even if I've warmed it up, she just turns up her nose and walks away. The little one as I said, will eat anything. So the challenge has been to find something to make that mom will want and I did manage to make a great treat the other day that she absolutely loved.

Today I made treats for us all. My favorite oatmeal and cranberry cookies (with chocolate chips as well) .  The original recipe had white flour and sugar, but I changed it to be a bit healthier than usual.  I also made the sweet honey treat for the dogs, the recipe is something I made up to be a bit like the oatmeal recipe, but no chocolate - and no oatmeal.

Oatmeal and cranberry cookies

Mix in a separate bowl:
1.5 cup whole wheat (or spelt if you prefer)
1 tsp baking soda
0.5 tsp salt
2.5 cups oats

Whisk well together in the mixer:
1 cup butter
1 cup brown sugar
0.5 cup white sugar

Add to this:
 2 large eggs
1 tbsp honey
2 tsp vanilla essence

Lastly add the wheat and oatmeal mix from the bowl and:
1.5 cup cranberries
1 cup chopped up dark chocolate

Put on baking sheet with baking paper with a teaspoon.  Bake at 180C/350F for about 10-12 min.

Sweet honey treat  for the bitches

2.5 cups whole wheat
1 cup boiled rice (I just had that in the fridge, this could also be oats)
1/4 cup honey
1/4 cup brown sugar
1/4 cup milk or cream
2 tbsp sunflower oil
2 eggs

Mix everything together.  Make into little balls and squish them flat on a baking sheet.
Bake at 180C/350F for 30 min.  Most recipes for dog treats that I have seen say to let this sit in the oven until cold and hard, but my dogs like them a little soft.  I give them only one a day of these and remember to brush their teeth.
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The photo: My Swedish kitchen scale, bought at the G. S. for not much is missing it's bowl and little thingy, but it works. I can't resist old baking forms either..

Natural or chemical - Well, is there any difference?

The natural world is a world of chemicals.  We sometimes forget that and talk about chemicals is if they were the spawn of the devil.  Chemicals are not inherently "good" or "bad" they just react with other chemicals.  Most of them serve a purpose in nature, even if that purpose is to kill other living things.  I think most people use the word "chemical" to describe man made chemicals but of course that is not a correct use of the word.  I'm not a chemist so I do not know how many chemicals are purely man made but I have to admit that I tend to think that if it occurs in nature it is better than what has been made in a laboratory.  Even if I know that there is no scientific rational behind that.  This is simply because I think at least there is some knowledge and history with naturally occurring chemicals whereas something completely new is completely unknown. 

My interest in chemistry has increased dramatically by my meddling in making creams and soaps.  I constantly read about the composition and qualities of the different carrier oils, butters, waxes and essential oils.  I get excited by adding sugar or honey or salt or colour to my soaps.  I wonder about the quality of the ingredients that I use. I wonder how many of the good qualities survive the meeting with lye.  (And I think they must to a great extent because I can feel a difference in my soaps depending on what I use in them, but I'm not sure.  I have thought of doing small batches of single oils just to experience and feel the difference because I feel it's not enough to read about what others have done although it is really interesting and helpful.)  I have bought vitamins and AHA's and BHA's and somthing I can hardly pronounce, but supposedly makes me beautiful, for use in my creams.  All because I really want to make something that works well for the purpose it is designed.

I can therefore quite understand the quest of modern manufacturers to isolate active ingredients, standardize  them and consequently use the stuff that has names that few of us can pronounce.  It stems from a natural urge to make things in a better and safer way.  By isolating the good stuff and using it in a pure form the manufacturer can guaranty a consistent quality of his products. But it seems sometimes to me that we have traveled in a circle. Instead of feeling safe and secure that the purest and best ingredients have been used I have started to feel like a victim of marketing.  The latest trademarked ingredients that are supposed to do miracles just don't sound convincing anymore and some ingredients I just don't trust.  I logically know that parabens are fantastic preservatives.  That is why they are so widely used.  I just don't want to use them on my skin anymore.  That may be completely irrational from a scientific point of view, but I don't care!  That is why I started to make my own.  To know what is in there and get to choose what I put on my skin.

After more than a year without commercial cosmetics I look and feel better that ever before.  I like to think that it is because the relatively simple ingredients agree with my skin and my body. But it may also just be because I have found a hobby that I love.  Passion in one area in life tends to feed into other areas. I don't really care which it is, because either way - it works!

The photo: I love lavender, but have a hard time keeping it alive.  The tiny candlestick I bought for a song and I love it. No name, I just like it for what it is: Pretty.  It could be fairly old, judging from the style of painting and the fact that it is unmarked and made of stoneware to look like something finer, but I don't think it is valuable to anyone but me.  My beloved oil lamps are in the back.

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Liquid soap using sodium hydroxide

I've been meaning to get some potassium hydroxide to make liquid soap.  I would like to make my own dishwashing liquid and also a liquid handsoap.  Both for me and my daughter who requested some.  The problem is, I have to buy another 25 kg of the stuff and truthfully, I think that really is overkill.  I just want to try the stuff, not set up a production line, for crying out loud!  So I always read a bit wistfully about liquid soap, the ingredients are basically the same and method isn't complicated.  It's just a question of getting my hands on a tiny amount of the other lye.

I've even thought about grating some soap and diluting it with water to see if that can be used in a soap pump, but never got around to doing it.  So I was thrilled when I came accross a recipe for liquid soap that listed good old NaOH rather than KOH as an ingredient.  I was a bit skeptical at first, thinking that it might just be a mistake.  It actually turned out to have been one, but it was explained that the writer had made the soap, both with NaOH and KOH and liked the NaOH better.  So I decided to go for it.

The recipe was on a website called The Little House in the Suburbs and it contained coconut, canola and vegetable shortening.  I fully intended to follow that to the letter (apart from the fuzzily defined vegetable shortening which I can't get here) but circumstance led me to have to devise my own recipe.  The only oil I had was a dark Olive oil so I used that and coconut oil.  The original seems to be pure white and I like that, so I will make another batch soon with white oils.  When I was going to make mine it was 3 o'clock in the morning and the internet wasn't working, I could only load Icelandic sites, but no foreign sites.  This was probably due to some Scottish farmer plowing his field and taking the cable in two (you'd think there were more sophisticated explanations to technological failures!).  So I couldn't use Soapcalc and I wasn't about to start to compute lye at that hour.  The solution was to use an old recipe and measure exactly.

The recipe I used was:
122 g /4.3 oz.  coconut oil  - 30%
298 g /10.5 oz.  olive oil    - 70%

250 g / 8.5 oz  water  -   this is quite a bit more than usual - about 60% of oil weight
56 g / 2.1 oz lye  - I allowed for about 5% SF - which might not be necessary in dishwashing soap.

The process is the same as usual CP.  When the oils and water have been combined the whole thing is insulated (I don't usually do that with CP) and left for 24 hours.  I put the soap in a large stainless steel pot and just shoved it in the cold oven and left it there.  The next evening I started to add more water to it.  A cup or so at a time up to 1.5 liter.  First I did this in the oven at a temperature of 105-120 C and stirred it in a little bit.  When it was starting to look liquid and smooth I put it on the stove and heated gently and added more water and stirred.  There was a bit of foam on the top, so I just skimmed that off and threw it away.  When I felt the soap was the right consistency I let the whole thing cool a bit and added lavender and peppermint EO and then poured it into bottles.

I like the soap.  It feels nice on the skin and it hasn't clogged the soap dispenser yet.  My daughter doesn't like the colour, but it's very olive-oil-soap-green so I figure that can't be bad.

Update:  I think this could be diluted a bit more.  I also put it much diluted into a foam dispenser and it works beautifully in that.  Soft, soft foam.  Much better than what was in there before.

The photo: I paid about 8$ for that candlestick and that is more than I usually spend but I liked it.  The tray is a dime a dozen used in catering quite a lot and I just love old terracotta pots.

There's no accounting for taste

I have thought a lot about the look of my soaps.  When I started out I had no special molds, so I used what I could find: milk cartons, ice cream containers, empty shampoo bottles, bits of pipe cut in two and my cute little pastry molds.  Soon I ordered a log mold and have used that a lot since then.  It's easy to use and I like the chunky look with some light swirl decoration on top.

I have also experimented with whipped soap in muffin forms and soap on a rope (that was all the rage in the 70's for those who remember back that far :) as well as piping soap from a piping bag used for icing cakes and using a round cake tin to make cake slices.  All of these look good in their own way and I guess I'm still looking for a look that is mine, so to speak.

I look at the soap of others and I see that swirling is very popular and I truly like the look of some of those.  Some soapmakers just make works of art.  I'm in awe of some of them and I'm definitely going to try some of that.  The only trouble is that
somehow I think that swirling looks better with the clear crisp colours that I am a bit reluctant to use.  But maybe it'll look exactly the way I like it, we'll see.

But to get back to the heading of this post, I thought it was a bit amusing when my husband walked past the rebatch leftovers that I had hurriedly made into balls and went:  Oh wow, those look really good, did you just make those?  I really like those!

Huh, there really is no accounting for taste.

The photos: Soap balls.  Very easy to make, but they look nice in this French iron soapdish from Comptoir de famille.  I have been crocheting a border for bedlinen like I remember from my childhood. The other photo: This soapcake is very basic and perhaps not the prettiest, but it was fun to make. I am collecting cake dishes for the wedding. this one I bought new and it is a bit small.

Madder root - pink perfection

Like most girls I like pink!  I don't know what it is about pink that makes it so special that all little girls seem to like it.   Naturally pink soap is on the top of my list of "must" colours.  I did find a synthetic colour that produced a decent pink.  It's a nice enough colour, but I haven't ever used the soap myself.  I just dislike it a bit.  The colourant is sold as a soap colour and is supposed to produce a lilac and probably does in melt and pour bases, but in CP it is pink.  The label doesn't say anything about what is in it!  Maybe I'm a control freak, but I need to know exactly what goes into my soaps and there is no ingredients list on this colourant.  So my preference for a natural alternative drove me on in my search for alternatives.  And I found it in Madder root, Rubia tinctorium.

I found this great little website: Leaftradingpost.com.  It's not a soap supply page, they sell some really neat natural things like antlers, sheepskin, beeswax and natural dyes.  Their prices are very reasonable and the service is excellent.  I ordered some dyes and a bit of mordant (that's to use in fabric dyeing should I get bored with soaps - fat chance) and one of them was madder root.

Madder root is soluble in water and although I had seen somewhere a suggestion to use madder root powder infused in oil, I had more coarse chunks and put them into the lye solution.  It turned a lovely purplish red.  I saw somewhere that it was smart to steep it in the lye solution overnight, but I was in a hurry.

Madder root has very many colouring agents ranging from orange to blue-red.  That is the pretty Alizarin which will only show up in a fairly alkaline environment, like lye.  When Madder root is put in water it turns an orangey sort of colour, but add a bit of lye - magic!

I probably should have steeped it overnight because the result was a VERY delicate pink.  But pretty all the same.  I put some madder in a jar with some lye and put it in the fridge for using next time.  Maybe I'll get a darker pink.

I made up a new recipe that I thought would be gentle and suitable for a pink soap:

Coconut oil            -   175 g / 6.2 oz
Lard                        -   175 g / 6.2 oz
Grapeseed oil         -   104 g / 3.7 oz
Almond oil             -   102 g / 3.6 oz
Apricot kernel oil   -     74 g / 2.6 oz
Sunflower oil          -     70 g 2.5 oz
Lye      -   98 g / 3.5 oz
Water   - 266 g /9.4 oz
That should be about 5% SF, but as always check in a lye calculator.

So about 1 tbsp madder root into the hot lye solution which is then strained into the oils.
For fragrance I used a blend of clary sage, geranium and lemongrass EO.  Smells wonderful.  The resulting soap was a nice consistency, fairly hard for me and it cut nicely.  It's still curing, so I'll have to wait a little while to test it.

Update:  The colour faded and was gone after about 9 months.  But this is still one of my favorite soaps.

The photo: More doilies.  These will end up on my daughters wedding dress. The rubber gloves were a gift from the happy couple, the wooden box stores my seeds and the pressed glass bowl is part of a matching set that I use in the guest bathroom.

Sea Buckthorn - beautiful yellow

I came accross Sea Buckthorn (Hippophae Rhamnoides) oil more than a year ago when I was surfing the internet late at night.  Come to think of it I think it was around 3 or 4 in the morning and I hadn't been able to sleep.  So there I was exhausted, trying to get sleepy when I came across a website (Naturally thinking) that sold all different kinds of oil.  And the prices were very good, 6£ for a liter of the most common carrier oils like almond, grapeseed, peach!  I could get none of those here and I wanted them.  So I ordered all the 6-£-a-liter bottles and a few small quantities of very exotic oils, which cost a bit more.   Like Argan, Borage and the subject of this post Sea Buckthorn oil which I really didn't know existed before.

When I awoke the next morning I wondered if it had all been a dream, and decided not to think about it (it's a well known coping method sometimes called: Let go, let God.  It works pretty well).  Some days later I got an annoucement that I had 10 liters of oil waiting in customs.  Oops, I hadn't really planned to do this, but now that I had, I just paid the customs and VAT charges and headed happily home and hid the stash from my husband.  That was the real start of my face cream making.  So a very happy ending to that story, but the lesson is: Do NOT have a credit card handy late at night while drowsily surfing the internet.

But enough of that, I was going to say: Sea Buckthorn is a wonderful oil.  It has all sorts of good stuff in it like vitamins A, E, K1 (huh?), minerals like calcium, zink, magnesium, phosphorus AND 22-fatty-acids-42-types-of-lipids-and-36 flavonoids.  It says so on the bottle and I believe it, all except the flavonoids.  I think it must be carotenoids, since flavonoids are water soluble, while carotenoids are oil soluble.

Plant pigments are grouped into a few groups: Flavonoids are water soluble and give plants all sorts of colours (yellow and blue, purple to magenta depending on PH) along with carotenoids (yellow, orange, red), betalaines (orange, red, violet) and porphyrins (green).  Apparently there are thousands of these pigments in nature and their blend produces all the various shades that we see in plants.  Some of these are antioxidants and very good for us.  This is why we should eat as many colours as possible in our vegetables and fruit.

Sea buckthorn oil is yellow to orange, almost red and has a very distinctive smell which I like very much.  The first time I used it I was surprised at how much colour it gave the cream I was making and I have to admit that my face was quite yellow after applying it, not stained though!  So it should not have come as a surprise that is is an excellent soap colourant.  I was composing a recipe rather spontaneously that I intended to be especially good for people with eczema/psoriasis.  I only used about a teaspoon in a 600 g. oil recipe along among other things, St. Johns Wort oil (that has colour too), some aloe vera juice, jojoba oil and oatmeal tea.  I won't post the recipe just yet because the soap is so soft that I can hardly cut it or lift it up without squishing it!  It has the potential to be a lovely soap if it ever hardens, but I may have used too much of unsaponifiable oils in it.  If that is the case I will rebatch it with something really good and get a very good average!  As it is it has the warm, sweet and mellow scent of Sea Buckthorn oil and the strong orangey yellow  colour and it's probably very gentle on the skin and possibly very good for it too.

Next time I will use a little less to see if I can get a lighter yellow.  I also look forward to using the annatto seeds that came in the last package.

The photo: The lovely colours of Sea Buckthorn in soap and cream.  I love to crochet doilies.  I did them when I was a teenager, they were so much fun to do.  I also have a thing for pressed glass.

Kladdkaka - quick, easy and absolutely delicious

May 1st. is celebrated here like a national holiday.  Everyone gets a day off to participate in a parade in support of workers, red flags and all.  We used to do that when I was young, but nowadays few people bother.  Unfortunately May 1st is on a Saturday, so there is no extra holiday, but I'm going to making soaps today, anyway.  And that is at least as much fun, if not more than having a day off.

To celebrate workers everywhere this cake is perfect.  It even comes in red.  It's a Sweedish cake, called Kladdkaka, that is really easy to make, takes no time at all and tastes delicious.  It's supposed to be a bit gooey in the middle, but that can be adjusted according to taste by the baking time.

I originally got a recipe from the newspaper.  I NEVER make anything from recipes in the newspaper (not that there is anything wrong with doing that) BUT this recipe spoke to me so I tore it out and and I made the cake for dessert one day.  The guests really liked it.  So I decided to make it again but discovered that I had lost the recipe.  I sat down at the computer and Googled and found this recipe on a Swedish website and it turned out to be even better that the original one.  The Swedish website has instructions in swedish, but it comes with pictures.  Just in case not everyone understands that language, here it is, with my preferences for serving. It serves 6-8 people.

• 100 g. butter (3.5 oz.)
• 2 eggs
• 2,5 dl sugar (1 cup)
• 1 tbs vanilla sugar
• 3 tbs cocoa powder
• 2 dl flour (just over 3/4 cup)

Heat the oven to 175 C/ 350F

Melt the butter, it's easiest to do it in the microwave on 400W so that the butter doesn't splash all over.  Put that aside to cool a bit.
Whisk the eggs and sugar well
Add the cocoa and vanilla sugar - do this gentry on low speed so it dosn't... you know.
Add the flour and then the melted butter.
Pour it into a heart shaped form (a circular one can be used, but it's not as much fun), put it into the middle of the oven for approx. 20 minutes.

The original instructions say to cool the cake and then serve it.  I put a mixture of strawberries and blueberries over the warm cake, dust it with icing sugar and serve it immediately still in the silicone form with vanilla ice cream and/or whipped cream (no sugar in that).  I just like it better when it's warm.

The photo: This is the easiest cake to bake and everyone loves it. Just put all the ingredients in a bowl, stir and put in a heart shaped form and bake for 20 minutes. Berries and sugar on top, serve with ice cream AND whipping cream.