Making bath bombs with kids!

This post is titled "making bath bombs with kids" but to be honest it should be called "making bath bombs with my eldest, who's 7, because god knows what would happen if I let 2-year-old Phoebe near citric acid powder".  You get my point.

Lillia has been angling to make bath bombs at home ever since she went to her friend's birthday party at Lush and got to make their "space girl" bomb with glitter, purple dye and the works.  And to be honest I've been pretty keen on the idea ever since I was given James Wong's book Grow Your Own Medicine a few years ago.  So I finally ordered some citric acid powder from Amazon and bought up several pots of bicarbonate of soda and we were pretty much good to go.

 

We mixed up our bath bomb ingredients according to the recipe - citric acid powder, bicarb, olive oil and lavender oil and worked it into a dryish mix that could be pressed together in our moulds (unwilling to splash out on proper bath bomb moulds I used silicone baking cases which worked a treat.)  Lillia loved adding all the ingredients and measuring out the powders, though bear in mind we were clad in aprons and latex gloves! Lillia found the citric acid powder made her a little sneezey if we were too quick with our getting it into the bowl, but as long as we went slowly we found she was fine as we weren't creating too much "cloud".

Then we added dried lavender leaves that I had kept in a hand sewn pouch since I picked them in June 2009.  Four years ago!  FOUR!!

It still smells divine, and mixed with the lavender oil it smells even more so.  The first bomb we used in the girls' bath near enough knocked them unconscious with the sheer amount of relaxing aromas that exploded around the bathroom.

Lillia spent some time pressing the mix into the cases and making sure they were neat.  We made lemon and lavender ones too by using the same bowl we had mixed our 100% lavender ones in and adding lemon oil in place of lavender oil - this produced a lovely citrus bomb with a hint of lavender. Lovely.

The best part though of course is the moment they are ready to be dropped in a warm bath and release their oils and their fragrance in a fizzy explosion. Lillia can't get enough of these fizzling delights.  She is already planning her next range of flavours...watch out Lush! :)

Custard Powder

I have a tin of Bird's Custard Powder in my cupboard that really needs to be used up before it becomes an antique. 

So I searched the interwebs for decent custard powder recipes and was led staight back to a book I have on my shelf....

Ah, good old Nigella and her cake-making genius.  The Birthday Custard Sponge recipe has custard powder in the cake mix and in the buttercream.

 

I ommited the chocolate icing, which looked altogether too sickly for my tastes, and just used buttercream for the sandwiching and topping. I then grated some chocolate on top for a little decoration and flavour.

 

Of course I had a little helper to keep me on track.  She's particularly good at mixing!

 

It turned out to be delicious and had a lovely moist puddingy texture. Yum yum.

 

It was also incredibly easy to make - just shove all the ingredients in a food processor and blend!  Then the cake takes 20 minutes to bake, which is great if you need a speedy cakey treat double quick, you can have this whipped up, cooled and iced within the hour.

 

I made it again this morning in fact.  This time I used only 3 eggs instead of the recipe's 4. 

4 seems a little excessive for one cake don't you think?  Not that I want to question Nigella of course.  But it did seem a little lighter this time round :)

 

 

So there you have it! A great use for custard powder, highly recommended, yummity yum x