DIY Vanilla Sugar Scrub

Hello friends,

If you love baking as much as I do, then you'll understand my need to bring it into every single part of my life. Baking, eating, and now smelling like a cupcake. Yes, you are still on the right blog. No, you did not misread the title. I plan on sharing with you the wonderful  secret I've learned thanks to sites like Pinterest.

You can make your own deliciously scented, economically awesome, body scrub. I have dropped at least $20-30 bucks on a precious jar of scrub from Sephora or Ulta, but no more! This recipe, including the glass mason jar I keep it in, comes in at roughly under $3 a batch.

Did I mention that you will have all of these ingredients already in the pantry? Oh and it's totally okay for sensitive skin. I break out even if the water is too hot in the shower, but this scrub leaves my skin baby soft and without a bump.

Here's our wonderful cast of characters: white sugar, brown sugar, vegetable oil, and vanilla extract. Feel free to splurge and pick up coconut oil or sunflower oil, but canola works just fine and does not have any unwanted smells, like olive oil. Also, you'll need the container you plan on storing the scrub in. I use a mason jar because I like the airtight seal and it's just super cute, but if you have kids or are afraid of shattered glass, just pick up a heavy duty tupperware container.

Fill your container with equal parts white and brown sugar, or as close as you can get. The great thing with this recipe is that it's pretty much adjustable to any kind of ingredients you have on hand. I even do all white sugar with fresh lemon zest for a to-die-for citrus scrub.

Pour out the sugars and mix them together until it looks like you have a bunch of beach sand. Pack the sugar back into your jar, then add about one tablespoon of vanilla extract and a few tablespoons of oil. Let the oil and extract seep into the sugar completely before adding any more oil. You want the oil to penetrate about 1/2 way down the sugar mixture.

Then turn it out one more time into a bowl and mix with your fingers until scrub comes together. When you wash your hands after this you will already begin to notice how awesome this scrub feels.

And that's it! Pack it back into your jar, screw on your lid and you're good to go. Want more scrub ideas? Here's some links with some great ideas for other scrubs that are great on your skin AND on your wallet.

DIY Citrus Salt Scrub
DIY Pumpkin Spice Sugar Scrub
DIY Beauty Tips (with Body Scrub Recipe)

And don't worry; I'll be back next week with a delicious cupcake I've been aching to try out from HowSweetEats.

Until then,

Happy scrubbing!

Cupcake Challenge Day 2: Vanilla Chai

Hello friends,

So remember when I mentioned that this month would be a cupcake "challenge"? I originally employed that word because it was exciting and fun, but apparently I was quite accurate with the literal meaning of "challenge"....

Cupcakes are supposed to be stress-free, at least in my opinion they are.

Yet, as I type that I realize I spent 9 hours one day last April making over 1000 cupcakes with the baking club, and in reality that was one of the most stressful experiences ever. I must have missed the memo: cupcakes are now "challenging". Be warned.

I learned this yesterday as I attempted to bake up Vanilla Chai Cupcakes. I followed this recipe to a T but sadly, in the words of my favorite European judge Florian on Cupcake Wars: "this cupcake, it did not work for me."

The recipe said to only fill the liners with 2 tablespoons of batter. So first batch naturally came out like so:

Why did I think it was going to rise more? Who knows. So the next batch I filled it with 1/4 cup, my default when filling cupcake liners. Did they rise more? Yes, of course. Were they any better?

Sadly, no. Unfortunately it just tasted like a lot of ginger, and the consistency was chewy, sticky, and overall disappointing. It's worth trying again (I am a big fan of Bakingdom - anybody who shows me how to make homemade butterbeer definitely deserves another shot in my kitchen). But I have the sinking feeling that these will not be fought over at my workplace as in precious times...

Well, I didnt want to show you these, perfectionist that I am, but this IS about the experience, and not all of them can be as stellar as I'd like them to be. Challenge doesn't always mean success.

 

I know I usually include the recipe here, but I linked it above and instead I thought I'd share with you all a few links that I find really helpful when baking up cupcakes:

1. Missing an ingredient? Check out Diana's Desserts "Ingredient Substitutions" page for a whole slew of ideas on how to substitute ingredients for items you may already have in your pantry. After stumbling upon this site I never bought store-bought buttermilk again.

2. Basic Cupcake Tips from SomewhatSimple. She has a great list of tips for cupcake baking in general, including how to fill you piping bag, how long to bake cupcakes for, and what kind of liners to use with which kinds of cake.

3.  Basic Royal Icing Recipe from Sweetopia. This is an adorable illustration of how to make Royal Icing. Informative, quirky, and cute, it's a great printout to keep in your recipe book (or to repin onto one of your Pinterest Boards!)

That's all for now. I have (hopefully) something cute in the works for Easter later this week, so check back later for more cupcake concoctions and sweet tips.

Happy Baking!