Simple Bath Bomb Recipe

Make Your Own Bath Bombs With This Simple Recipe

Did you miss our deadline to order for Valentines? Or are you home-schooling and need something fun to do with the kids to entertain them? (Surely it counts as science right?!) Or maybe you're bored and home on lockdown and need something to do for an hour or so?! Then this simple recipe to make bath bombs might just be the solution you need!

You can experiment with colours, fragrances and shapes. This recipe is easy to adapt to whatever you have in the cupboards!

Ingredients:
100g Bicarbonate of Soda
50g Citric Acid (available from Wilko, Holland & Barrett or online)
25g Cornflour
25g Epsom Salts (optional)
2 tbsp oil (sunflower, olive oil, melted coconut oil...)
​Water
1/4tsp essential oil or fragrance oil (available from Holland & Barrett or online)
A few drops of liquid colouring (either cosmetic or food colouring)
Edible cake sprinkles, Dried flowers or orange peel to decorate (optional)

You will also need:
Mixing Bowls
Whisk
​Sieve
Plastic or Metal Moulds 

Pretty much anything can be used as a mould for your bath bombs! From yogurt pots, to plastic packaging from toys, Easter egg packaging, silicone ice cube trays, silicone cup cake cases or even plastic biscuit cutters placed on a tray. 

What to do

1. Sieve all the dry ingredients into a bowl, and whisk until mixed together.
​2. Pour the oil, colour and fragrance into a separate bowl and mix together as well as you can.
3. VERY slowly add the oil mixture to the dry ingredients bowl, whisking as you go. 
4. When they are mixed, add a few drops of water and whisk again. Whenever you add wet ingredients to the dry it will fizz, so make sure you keep whisking! The mixture should clump together in your hands when you press it together - be careful not to get it too wet!
5. If you're adding any decorations, drop them into the bottom of your mould. Pack your mixture tightly on top, pressing down and smoothing out the top.
6. Leave your bath bomb in it's mould for a few hours to dry and harden. Then carefully remove it - it's now ready to drop in the bath!

Top Tips
- If your using a two sided mould, you need to overfill your mould before pushing the two sides together. This will help the sides to stick, although this can be tricky to get the hang of!
- Make sure you use either cosmetic colouring, or LIQUID food colouring. The gel colouring will clump and not spread as well. 
- Make sure you leave them to dry in a warm dry place. Humidity is not a bath bombs friend - they can be fickle little creatures!
- If you have more than one colour, why not make your bath bombs in layers?!
- Use your bath bombs within 6 months of making - as if they won't be used by then?!
- If you're giving them as a gift, it's a good idea to leave them for a few days to fully harden. Otherwise you'll have bath dust!
- You can colour your Epsom salts separately using your food colouring, and then layer them at the bottom to create a sparkly geode type effect!
- We add buttermilk powder to our bath bombs for extra foam.
- Steer clear of glitter - not only does it make a mess of your bath, but some can also be toxic when added to hot bath water.
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​Here's The Science-y Bit!
 
If you are home-schooling, and want to add a bit of science into the mix, here's how bath bombs work.

Bath bombs fizz because of a reaction between the water in your bath and the combination of bicarbonate of soda and citric acid. The bubbles are made of carbon dioxide gas, and this is an acid-base reaction. The cornflour helps to slow down the reaction between these ingredients, making your bath bomb last longer. 

For a complete science experiment, why not see if they behave differently in hot water and cold water? Do they fizz for longer? Do they dissolve quicker?
Or maybe you could try adding more or less of some of the ingredients to see if this changed the reaction?

​Of course, if this all seems too much of a fuss, you can always buy them from us! ;-)

​

Bath Bombs

£1.00 - £2.50

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Jumbo Bath Bomb

£3.25

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But if you do make them yourself, make sure you tag us in your photos on Facebook or Instagram! We'd love to see what you've been up to! xx