I don't pretend to be Martha

But when I do, I try her easier recipes.

I don't know how I happened upon this recipe, but of course all things Martha Stewart look so gorgeous and so easy, so I thought, I can do this.

I had some orange zest in the fridge which I was going to use in either biscotti or soap. Seeing how I didn't have enough eggs for biscotti, it went in the soap instead.

I decided to add some dried lavender into the mix as well for some colour contrast and a nice smell. Plus, I'm not much for using it in cooking, so what better place for it to end up than in some soap.

The first of the two soaps I poured ended up with way more of the orange and lavender on the bottom of the soap.

I'll know next time to spoon the soap into the mold so that it gets more evenly distributed. However, this meant the second pour came out much better.

 I used Litsea EO, which is a citrusy scent, to complement the lavender. All in all, I'm quite pleased with how it turned out.

What's your favourite natural ingredient to use in embedding?

I'm molting, I'm moooolting

I'm a little late with this week's post, not that you'd notice, but I like to come clean anyway. We were out yesterday picking up some organically grown raspberries and blueberries. Yum!

Since raspberries seem to like to die a quick death, we had some in our salad last night, as well as for dessert.

black cherry chocolate gelato with fresh raspberries and chocolate syrup

The berries don't explain my post title though, does it? Well I decided to be self indulgent and make some whipped body butter. Maybe it's just me, but I find that the liquid soap at work to be quite drying and so I need something emollient to counteract that.

I had bought some cocoa butter and almond oil during my last trip to Otion, and have been wanting to make some body butter for a while now. Most of the recipes I read asked for the butter, plus two types of oils. Since I don't have any coconut oil on hand, I decided to use all almond oil instead. 

Rather than measure everything out separately, I used the tare option on my scale to zero out everytime. The only problem was, I poured in too much almond oil, and then not thinking, I turned off my scale. Oops, now I didn't know how much was too much. I just poured some of the oil back into the bottle and hoped for the best.

I think it turned out alright, I scented it with vanilla FO to keep the scent more pure. I think it turned out just fine and I have 4 jars of it. That should last me right through to winter and I'll smell lovely the whole time.

Have you made whipped body butter? What's your favourite type of butter and scent to use?

My own private triumphs

I know I keep coming back to the same old, same old, but I'm still working on the soaps for my friend who makes Creampuffs by GG (check out the article in the Vancouver Sun about her). I'm having some trouble with embedding, and a lot of them come out looking like this because I don't get the embed in soon enough.

So I think I've  come up with a solution for this problem, which is to place another clear layer of soap over the embed, so that the white can't get underneath and make it cloudy.

On a completely unrelated note, but still on pigs, I've ordered half a pig from a farm that raises free range pigs. I'm going to be in bacon heaven.

Double the layers, double the fun

It's summer here finally! We've been having some really gorgeous weather, a little hot for some of us west coasters, to which all you mid and east coasters will just scoff. But this is why we live on the we(s)t coast, for the mild weather.

This heatwave inspired the following soaps. I thought about how to incorporate summer into the soaps and after looking at other people's soaps for inspiration, I decided to try embedding in different layers. The soaps are scented with sun ripened cherry, because cherries are another sign of summer. Here are the results.

Maybe I should've put him on a lilypad.

What says summer to you?