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February 21, 2013

Days of Wine and Rosehips







While helping my mother clean out her kitchen cabinets in November, I found a treasure trove of ingredients to go into soap—including a lot of neglected booze in dusty bottles.

This lovely bar contains a bottle of cheap red wine (don't ask me the name—maybe Sutter's Revenge???) that I reduced and used in place of water.

I think the scent of the wine actually made it through the lye process, there's a real intoxicating top note that hits you first followed by my pretty complex blend of lemongrass, orange, may chang, pine, cedarwood, ho wood and black pepper essential oils.

I tried to get clever and add kosher sea salt and some insanely expensive Himalayan pink sea salt as layers and as a sprinkling on the top. My thought was the salt would still do that miraculous creamy thing to the lather, but wouldn't make the bar so crumply. Also thought by doing that, the pinkness of the salt would be more pronounced.

The bars are still a bit messy—most of the salt on the top went all over my kitchen as I was cutting the bars, but I like the effect of the layers.

Ingredients:
olive oil infused with alkanet and rosehips
coconut oil
palm kernel oil
castor oil
cheap red wine
kosher sea salt
Himalayan pink sea salt

Fragrance:
Lemongrass, orange, may chang, pine, cedarwood, ho wood and black pepper essential oils





If you like this blog, check out my new one: The Haley Maxwell Soap Making Mysteries