Lorri's having a birthday and bananana!

haha, more on bananas! I made my banana bread the other day, which requires 2/3 cup oil, and in my not-paying-attention, I put 2 CUPS of oil in my bananas... lucky the bananas had been on sale and I was planning on freezing some for future banana bread, I was able to puree an extra 4 cups of bananas to make up for the extra oil! Funny as usually I use apple sauce for this pair of breads I make, but this time I was lazy..... I think I would have tweaked at 2 cups of apple sauce!!!
Goodness... I made two huge banana breads, a banana bread cake and some banana muffins!!! And I'm happy to report our new oven seems to be behaving!

Could be too that I'm used to large quantities of oil, given my recent soapmaking venture!


Onto Lorri, who owns Scrappindipity with her daughter Bec, is having a birthday giveaway... so stroll on down to her blog to see the rules, and spread the love!!!
Lorri's Blog
The post in question

go have a look around, she's pretty darn talented :)

And I promise to draw my winner for the coffee soap in the coming few days ;) I'm feeling a bit chicken, but I have given some people at work some soap and they seem happy with it (either that or they are GOOD liars!)... Ah, let's make it Australia Day Draw!!! ... see you then!!

Ice Cream Bars are on Allrecipes.com.au

Filomena at work gave me this recipe, I wanted to check the ingredients as I wasn't sure if I'd missed anything (I scribbled it on my glove at work!) which led to a conversation with Liz at Allrecipes.com.au, which led to this:


Featured recipe for 20th January 2009

A little while ago, the recipe below (which I sort of insisted Liz put up, but being it was taken from the Allrecipes.com, site it had to be copied from there, but it featured my piccie of my little cupcakes ;)


Here's the link to the cupcake recipe.

now I'm going to go test our new (landlord provided) oven with my Banana Bread recipe... WISH ME LUCK!!

One Banana, Two Banana, Three...

go see Pauline's Banana!!!
Anyone else?

Yes, I should think of a better title than SOAP!

My soap buddy Gabbie has been putting me to shame, she started soaping a week before me and has already made over 30 batches!!!

Ok, since my last lot of pictures, this is what I've been up to...
I did make my tooth soap, and I've even been using it, that soon after making it, and it's just simply wonderful. You have to try to not put your tongue on it too much as it does taste soapy, but I like it so much better than my favourite toothpaste!!!

Then after that I made a great Coconut Oil soap... 100% coconut oil, with a twist... Thanks to my new friend Justine who inspired someone by the name of Irish Lass, who has been singing the praise of Justine's idea!
This is my rendition of it. Yes, I'm still trying that elusive swirl! Oh, and I used a rubber stamp to decorate this bar!!!




I then revisited my first batch, making it a bit different, with no oatmeal (though I do love some oats in my soap!!) - I attempted a 2 colour ultramarine swirl in that one, but something didn't go quite right! Though it looks like it'll be a nice soap if not a pretty one!


And then came the disaster!!!!!!!
It all started with my coconut soap (which I now call Extra Cocolicious)... all went fairly well though I didn't really manage a swirl this time either (the elusive swirl!)... and I thought I'd gotten a really nice gel:

When I unmoulded it, it looked not quite completely cooled down, but still nice enough (and definitely NOT displaying a very nice swirl, but I can live with that)

but when I cut my first slice, oil came oozing out!!! You can see the pool of oil (upper right) above the soap

So I turned to the savvy soapers at The Dish and it turns out I soaped way too hot (it was HOT indeed on Sunday!!!) I forgot to cool my water, my oils were too hot... just one silly little mistake after another which yielded a mistake larger than the sum of its part!!!
So I thought, nothing to lose, let's try a rebatch!!!
That's when you take your botched soap (though some people choose to do this with good soap!) and you cut it in slivers:

and you put it in a crock pot (which ended up in the oven as the crock pot temperature wasn't high enough on LOW and I was too scared to put it on HIGH!

and you melt it in the oven until it ressembles goop!!!
You then slop it in a mould, and well, to my surprise, the resulting soap is not bad! A bit grainy, a bit ugly at the top, but I adore the scent I used (Ancient Sedonia and Vanilla Select, from Bramble Berry, which I get via AussieSoapSupplies!)....

But tonight, I think the Soap Goddess is with me as I made a Goat Milk soap -- they are notoriously difficult, from what I read, as milk makes soap overheat but I figured, after the disaster of Sunday, let's jump in with both feet... and so far, so good!!! The soap even looks really nice!!! I scented it mildly with some lavender oil, took my time, and so far, so good, but it's in the fridge to prevent gel!
Photos will have to be shown tomorrow...

and on a completely different note...

now, why is my banana sad?


can you see the face ?

OH!! GIVEAWAY UPDATE!!! well, I tried my coffee soap, and it's slightly exfoliant, and I am waiting for a couple more soaps to come to maturity so the winner (when I draw the name) will have a bit of a choice, as I'm not sure everyone will like soap with scratchy coffee in it :) it's not scratchy really but you can definitely feel it... so if you haven't entered, please do here.