Moving Day!

Posted on September 6, 2010 by Charity

I didn’t do a post this weekend because I have been busy moving.  Moving this blog, that is.

That’s right, I have moved all of my cooking, crafting, and soaping posts over to a new domain – charitytensel.com.

Right now, it looks almost identical to this blog, but I will be changing that soon.

I will no longer be posting at this site, so please update your feed readers or bookmarks.

I will still post a link on twitter when I have a new blog post, so if you follow this blog that way, you don’t have to do anything!

This blog will stay up, since the posts I imported to my new blog will still contain links that come here.  But, all new content will be over there.

So, what are you waiting for?  Come on by!

Posted in Blog-keeping | 1 Comment

A Back-to-School Melt and Pour Soap

Posted on August 29, 2010 by Charity

I made this crayons soap using a silicone molding putty to make the custom crayon mold.

I suggest removing the paper first, which I knew I should have done, but for some reason didn’t.  Here’s why.

The paper came out of my mold easily enough using rubbing alcohol, and I went on to make a variety of soap crayons.

I made the yellow one last.  It came out the most realistic because I used more colorant.  If I were to do this again, I would make all of the crayons like that.

Make sure to use non-bleeding colorants for this project, or else the crayons will bleed into the rest of the soap.

Pour a layer of clear soap (fragranced, if desired) into your mold.  Spritz the crayons with alcohol and place them into the clear soap.  Allow to set.

Use white melt and pour base, or add titanium dioxide to clear base, for the final layer (fragranced, if desired).  Be sure to spray the first layer with alcohol before pouring the white layer.

Allow to fully harden and pop out your crayons soap.  What a cute gift for your favorite teacher, or a great way to get your students or children to wash their hands.

You could get creative with this project and make a yellow box of crayons soap with a clear soap “window” that you can see the crayons through.

Posted in Soap | Tagged | 2 Comments

Why I Should Be on Bramble Berry’s SOAP Panel

Posted on August 27, 2010 by Charity

My favorite soap making product supplier, Bramble Berry, is putting together a Soap Opinion (Awesome) Panel and I am here to tell you why they should pick me!

If you have read any of my soap making (and other bath and body products) projects and tutorials, you should know that I always use Bramble Berry products.  As you can see here, here, here, and here, to name only a few, I love Bramble Berry’s fragrances and colorants.

My favorite product, though, has to be their melt and pour soap base, only because it is the best I have ever used.  I have customers that like it better than my cold process soap!

But, I could never pick just one product because I love them all!  And hopefully, they will pick me to sample some of their new fragrances and give my opinion as part of the SOAP panel.

You’ll also be happy to hear that I made a new “back to school” soap project – using Bramble Berry products, of course – that I will post this weekend.

Posted in Soap | 2 Comments

Coffee Cold Process Soap

Posted on August 16, 2010 by Charity

A friend of mine suggested I make some coffee soap, using real coffee grounds. I thought that might be fun, so I did a little searching and found a coffee soap recipe from About.com: Candle & Soap Making, one of my favorite soaping sites.

The recipe calls for using your favorite basic soap recipe and substituting double strength coffee for the water in the lye solution, then adding some dried used coffee grounds.

Simple enough, I thought.

Well, simple enough it was.  I did not have any problems making the soap.  However, the coffee and lye solution stinks like nothing I have ever smelled before!  It was disgusting.  The gross smell does go away and there is no trace of it left in the soap, but it was bad enough that I will probably not ever make it again.

I am glad that I tried it, though.  The soap is very nice.  The only thing I dislike is that the coffee grounds are very exfoliating and can even be a bit scratchy on my sensitive skin.  It makes a wonderful men’s soap, though.  Or a foot scrubbing bar.

The light brown color is the natural color and I used a little bit of cappuccino mica to make the swirl on top.

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Peanut Butter and Jam Thumbprints, in Pictures

Posted on August 8, 2010 by Charity

My youngest son loves peanut butter and raspberry jam sandwiches.  So, when I saw a recipe from Martha Stewart for Peanut Butter and Jam Thumbprint Cookies, I had to make them for him.

I decided to try something a little different with this post.  Instead of describing how to make them, I posted photos from each step.  If you hover over with your mouse, you can read the captions.  Be sure to head on over to Martha’s site for the complete recipe.

They are also good with a square of dark chocolate pressed into the middle.

Posted in Cooking and Recipes | Tagged , | 2 Comments

How To Make an Ice Cream Bombe (Bombe Glacée)

Posted on August 2, 2010 by Charity

My baby boy is turning 7 in 2 weeks and he wants an ice cream bombe for his birthday cake, so I thought I would re-post this how-to from last June. New post this Sunday. Promise.

I made a chocolate and vanilla ice cream bombe (bombe glacée) for Big E’s 11th birthday last month [last year]. This is a simple and delicious dessert that requires no special pan.

You will need:

2 cartons of ice cream (I used chocolate and vanilla)
1 package of Oreos
1 cup heavy cream
1 cup powdered sugar
1 tsp. vanilla
A large bowl
Plastic wrap

Take out the first carton of ice cream to soften. This will be the top layer of your finished bombe. I used chocolate.

Line your bowl with plastic wrap, both ways (top-to-bottom and side-to-side). This is your mold. Leave enough wrap hanging over to wrap the finished bombe.

Put your ice cream into your stand mixer and mix it with the paddle attachment to give it a smooth, spreadable consistency. This step is optional, but it does make the spreading easier.

Spread the ice cream into the mold, creating a bowl shape. Leave a space at the top.

Place one row of Oreos into a food processor and pulse into crumbs. Spread crumbs over the entire chocolate ice cream layer.

Put your bowl into the freezer to set the layer. It does not need to be totally hard, just hard enough to withstand putting on the second layer.

Prior to talking the bombe out of the freezer, take out the vanilla ice cream (or other second flavor) and let it soften. Then put it in the mixer, as you did with the chocolate.

Spread the vanilla ice cream so it is flat in the mold, leaving room for the final layer of crumbs.

Process another row of Oreos and press the crumbs into the top of the bombe. Cover with the over-hanging plastic wrap and put in the freezer until fully hardened.

Before removing the bombe from the freezer, make the whipped cream icing by whipping the cream, powdered sugar, and vanilla until a stiff, spreadable consistency.

Dip the bottom of the bowl in hot water to loosen the bombe and invert it onto a plate or pizza pan lined with a parchment circle. (Put the plate upside down onto the bowl, then flip the whole thing.)

Frost the entire bombe with the whipped cream icing. Freeze again to set the frosting. If you don’t plan to eat it right away, you can cover it with wrap after the icing is frozen.

Your bombe is now ready to eat!

Yum!

Posted in Cooking and Recipes | Tagged , , | 2 Comments

When Life Hands You Lemons (Or a Split Loaf)…

Posted on July 25, 2010 by Charity

This post originally appeared in June of 2008.

The other day, I set out to make a great loaf of multi-layered soap. I carefully melted, scented, colored, and poured each layer. I gently textured the top as it hardened. I patiently waited until the next day so the soap would be fully set before I unmolded it.

And here’s what happened to my bars of soap:

The reason was that the soap I used for the yellow and green layers was remelted from another project and the soap I used for the pink and white layers was a freshly opened 1 lb. bar.

Let this be a lesson: Always use the same base for multi-layer pours to ensure better adhesion.

Not the type to give up (or waste three pounds of soap!), I came up with another idea.

First, I melted a pound of clear glycerin soap in my handy crock pot.

Then, I cut my split loaf into cubes.

Next, I scented the clear soap (with the same fragrance oil as the other soap).

I poured a small layer of clear into a silicone loaf pan, sprayed it with alcohol, took a handful of cubes, sprayed them with alcohol, and put them into the loaf pan, adding more clear soap over the top and spraying with more alcohol.

(The alcohol helps the solid soap adhere and it pops the air bubbles on the top of the melted soap.)

After that set, I repeated the process, first spraying the set layer with alcohol.

Here is my final loaf.

I cut it into large 4 oz. body bars and half-sized 2 oz. hand soap bars.

Posted in Soap | Tagged | 1 Comment

Raspberry Macaroon Fail

Posted on July 19, 2010 by Charity

I made my fourth batch of Parisian Macaroons (macarons) this past week, only this time… well, you’ll see.

I was planning on attending a barbecue on Saturday, so I thought it was a great opportunity to try the Raspberry Macaroon recipe I saw on Martha Stewart.com.

I went out and bought some fresh raspberries and some fancy-pants raspberry preserves.  (It was the only kind I could find made with actual sugar, instead of high fructose corn syrup.)

I should have known something would go wrong when I couldn’t find my camera and had to use my DSi XL to take the pictures for this post, but I pressed on, determined to have a plate full of beautiful and delicious macaroons to wow the crowd at the barbecue.

I pressed a handful of mashed raspberries through a sieve to make a tablespoon of fresh raspberry puree.

I gathered up all of the the ingredients.

I followed the directions to the letter, twice sifting the powdered sugar and almond meal, making the meringue, folding in the sugar almond mixture, then the raspberry puree. Then, I carefully piped the cookies on the parchment paper that I had so carefully cut to line the pans.

I omitted the food coloring, but look at the beautiful pale pink color from the puree.

I peeked in the oven window to see the lovely feet on my little creations.

But then, something went awry.  When I tried to lift the macaroons from the parchment, the soggy, sticky bottoms stuck.

I don’t blame the recipe.  I think it was a good recipe overall.  I blame the high (very high!) humidity we were having.  It was as if the insides had pulled all the moisture they could from the air.  (After I left them out for a day or two, they were actually quite perfect in texture, in fact.)

Still, I managed to salvage just a few for a photo.  Ah, this is what I had hoped they’d look like.

The cookies themselves were delicious, with just a hint of raspberry.

But, I still needed to make something for the barbecue.  And I still had a jar of expensive fancy-pants jam.  So, I made Butter and Jam Thumbprints from foodnetwork.com.  I already had everything on hand, even a vanilla bean.

They were pretty good, I’m told, though I personally thought they were too buttery, if there is such a thing.

If you missed my previous adventures in macaroon making, you can catch up here.

Posted in Cooking and Recipes | Tagged , , , , | 5 Comments

Summer Break

Posted on July 11, 2010 by Charity

I decided to take a little blogging break.  Summer is a busy time, especially since, around here, we spend so many months of the year stuck in the house because it’s too cold outside.  I needed to take a couple weeks off from posting.

I should have told you this last weekend, instead of leaving you hanging.  Sorry about that.  I hope you and yours had a fun Independence Day weekend.

I’ll be back next Sunday.  Stay cool!

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Farmer’s Market Find: Garlic Scapes

Posted on June 27, 2010 by Charity

Last week, when we went to pick up our farm share booty, I discovered something I had never seen before: garlic scapes.

Apparently, when garlic grows, it sprouts a curly, green shoot that must be cut off in order to encourage the garlic to continue to grow underground into the delicious root that we all know and love.  That curly, green shoot is the garlic scape, which you can often find at farmer’s markets in June.

When I got home, I immediately researched what to do with this new-found treat.

One popular recipe on the internet is garlic scape pesto.  Basically, you make pesto substituting garlic scapes for the basil.  Here are two recipes that I found: Garlic Scape Pesto and Garlic Scape Pesto.

I think the scapes would be excellent in a stir fry.  I also want to try to use them to make a dip, the way onion dip is made, substituting the scapes for the onions.

I did not have enough scapes to make either of those, so I made a spinach, garlic scape, and parsley open-faced omelet.  (All three of those ingredients came from the farm.)

I combined chopped, fresh spinach, chopped parsley, shredded mozzarella, salt and pepper with 5 eggs and mixed well.

Then, I sauteed the chopped garlic scapes in a small amount of olive oil for a couple minutes in a small pan.

Turning down the heat to med-low, I added the egg mixture and covered.  I let that cook until the top of the eggs looked set.  (You will totally be able to smell it when it is ready.)

Cut into wedges and serve.  Yum!

I had two scapes left over, so I cut them into fine pieces and mixed them into a package of cream cheese, covered with plastic wrap, and refrigerated over night.

Serve that up on your morning bagel and you will not be sorry.  It was amazing!

So, the next time you see these curly beauties at your local farmer’s market, be sure to snag a few.  They add a delicious, mild garlic taste to any dish.

But get them while you can – they are usually only around in June.

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