Taonga Blog

We're Redesigned!!

2010-07-18T10:47:00.000-07:00

Well after a long day of very hard work, I've managed to completely redesign our site.

Take a look by clicking the banner below. I'd love to hear what you think :)

Also: Safety Assessments should soon be in for the traditional soaps, as well as a range of shower gels, lip balms and bath goodies. Watch this space!!

Kevin x

Scented Wooden Roses

2010-07-08T14:23:00.000-07:00

Hi all,

Made these today and I'm looking for opinions...

These are scented with rose FO and I really like them. I have all different colours so could do loads of different scents. Thinking of selling with a small (20ml or so) spray bottle, made like a room spray but stronger, that the customer can spray on the roses to refresh the scent.

What do you think?

Kevin x

Spatchcock Chicken...!

2010-07-05T10:10:00.000-07:00

Hi everyone,

I tried something new for the first time yesterday: spatchcocking a chicken!

Spatchcock basically means you cut out the bird's backbone and flatten it - like they do at Nandos. It's a lovely way of cooking a chicken on the BBQ as most of it cooks in the same amount of time. However, if you try it be sure to remove the keel bone which is the bit of cartilage and bone between the chicken's breasts (hehe!) as it makes the bird much easier to carve.

There is a good video tutorial for this here.

So anyway, I cooked the bird until almost done, then started slathering BBQ marinade all over both sides with a silicone brush every time I turned it over. The result was a delicious, moist yet flavoursome chicken.

I put the chicken in a pitta bread with a nice dressed salad and some coleslaw on the side. To accompany, I put some Jersey Royal potatoes in a foil pouch with oil, butter, salt and pepper and put on the BBQ at about the same time I started marinaded the chicken. They were delicious!

Here are some pics for you:

Go on, give it a go. I'm sure you'll love it!

With the leftovers, I have just finished making a scrummy chicken and mushroom risotto. Mmmmmmm!

Kevin x

Swirly Spa Bars

2010-07-04T02:10:00.000-07:00

Well not really sure they're swirls, more like marbled but I'm really please since these are salt bars which set up sooooooo quickly.

They contain around 50% sea salt which makes them really really soothing. They go hard like a stone and they're so lovely to use in the shower on a hot day.

It took me and Michael moving as quickly as we could, working as hot as possible to even get these in the individual moulds... Thinking I might try a loaf next time as there was lots of wastage near the end when it was setting.

Kevin x

Nutty Rocky Road

2010-06-17T06:57:00.000-07:00

Hey everyone,

I've been doing a lot of cooking and baking lately and I have a recipe for you. This rocky road is simply delicious, even if I do say so myself! Try not to think about all that fat though, it is a treat after all...

These sweet treats are always a hit with EVERYONE. They'll sell out at bake sales and are sure to make someone smile when given as a gift. The recipe is not exact, I tend to just chuck everything in!

1kg Milk Chocolate
250g Unsalted Butter
180-200g Mini Marshmallows (whatever size your pack is!)
100g Walnuts
50g Brazil Nuts
175g Digestive Biscuits
200g Glace Cherries

1. Place the chocolate in a bowl over a pan of boiling water to melt.

2. Bash the biscuits and nuts into smallish pieces and chop the cherries into a similar size and mix together with the marshmallows.

3. Once chocolate is melted, melt your butter separately and add to the chocolate. You now have to work very fast as the chocolate will begin to seize.

4. Beat the butter into the chocolate, and add to the rest of the mix.

5. Stir really well to incorporate and transfer to a baking tray lined with cling film. The mix will look grainy and you will think it is ruined as some of the fat sits on the surface. Don't panic, as it cools it will rectify itself!

6. Place in the fridge for a couple of hours to allow to set then slice into small pieces.

This should keep for a week or so, but it never lasts that long! Trust me! I like it with a thick dusting of icing sugar on top to finish it off.

Enjoy!

Kevin x

Ancient Orange Mead

2010-06-17T06:03:00.000-07:00

Hi everyone,

I've recently made this mead and it's fermenting as we speak. As part of the process, I thought I would share some pictures and describe my method.

I must add that I am by no means an expert. In fact, this is my first ever mead! But it's easy enough so I urge you to give it a go. The recipe is a 'classic' and has been tried successfully by hundreds of people worldwide.

First, here's the recipe for a 1gal batch:

3 1/2 lbs Clover or your choice honey or blend (will finish sweet)
1 Large orange (later cut in eights or smaller rind and all)
1 small handful of raisins (25 if you count but more or less ok)
1 stick of cinnamon
1 whole clove ( or 2 if you like - these are potent critters)
optional (a pinch of nutmeg and allspice.....very small )
1 teaspoon of dried bread yeast ( now don't get holy on me--- after all this is an ancient mead and that's all we had back then)
Balance water to one gallon

I also added a crushed Vit B1 tablet to each batch to help with the yeast as it was going rather slowly!

Next, a quick pic of the equipment and ingredients:

And here's my method:

1. Sterilise ALL of your equipment thoroughly... I use WVP but there are plenty of other methods if you prefer.

2. Mix your honey with some warm/hot water and add this to the container. I emptied the honey out of the jars, then added hot water to half full and poured this in too to ensure I got all of the honey out. In all, it needed just under 3.75 of these Asda Smartprice honey.

3. Chop your orange and get your stick of cinnamon, clove and raisins ready.

(Bit of a pointless pic but I thought it looked arty!!)
4. Add all of these to the container and top up with cold water to about 3 inches from the top; this is to allow for foaming of the yeast.

5. Once at room temperature, shake it up well to aerate and mix everything together take a SG reading for working out approx ABV etc. Bear in mind that this will go down a bit when you top it up with water but will go up as the sugar comes out of the fruits so this will only be approximate.

6. Finally, add the yeast to the mix and stir it in.

Voila! Now all you need to do is leave this in a warm dark place for approx 2 months and you will have a nice, tasty sweet mead (well, melomel actually but who cares?!) In a few days I will top up with water and leave it alone till the fruit drops!

UPDATE: After two days, although there was a nice foam on top, fermentation was quite slow so I added a crushed Vit B1 tablet and gave it a good shake. You can see, the raisins had rehydrated and everything is now floating:

I hope you find this useful!!!

A few notes:

I know some people have used specialist brewing yeast to make this and find it turns out FAR too dry. I know bread yeast isn't what you're 'supposed' to use for brewing but the idea is that it dies out after a certain alcohol %age, leaving some of the sugar unconverted and producing a nice sweet taste.

Also, I've made another one with a lemon and a lime in place of an orange on the recommendation of a friend of mine. I'm hoping it turns out well

Kevin

Homebrew: Making a Plastic Demijon

2010-05-11T01:03:00.000-07:00

Hi all,

Something I've been doing lately is making homebrew! It's so cheap compared to supermarket prices but can be quite expensive to start out so I decided to make my own demijons from 5ltr water bottles. Here's how:

Here's all of the equipment you'll need:

Empty 5ltr water bottle
Drill & drill bits
Rubber grommet (from any homebrew store)
Airlock

1. Place the lid on the bottle, and drill a hole. I used 13mm as that's the size needed for my grommet.

2. Wash the blue bits out of the bottle, then place the grommet in the hole.

3. Insert the airlock and, voila, one shiny new FV!

I hope someone finds this useful!

Kevin

Shaving Soap

2010-04-18T12:16:00.000-07:00

Hi everyone :)

Just popped on quickly to show you all my new shaving soaps. Made today, they still need to cure for a couple of weeks or so before we will really know how well they perform but so far I am very happy with them.

I added castor to my basic recipe to increase the stability and thickness of the lather and rhassoul clay to enhance razor slip. My initial tests suggest it works really well with the shaving brush... Half are fragranced with Bay Rum and half with Spearmint and Peppermint EOs - I love them both!

The shells are freshly fished from the coast of the West Country, not imported.

And a couple of Hipstamatic photos of these too... (Can you tell I love this app?!?!)

Hope you like them!

Kevin x

More work in the garden...

2010-04-17T13:53:00.000-07:00

I've been working in the garden again today. Not the best of jobs but it has to be done.

In the back garden we have an outside loo, which is joined to a brick outhouse. This outhouse has a lean-to conservatory thing that has seen better days! This is it:

Yes, those windows really are stuck to each other with SELLOTAPE!!! If I had my own way, I would just pull it down, attach an awning to the outhouse and use the space as a covered dining area. Alas, the house is rented so the landlords probably wouldn't let us and even if they did, I wouldn't want to spend that kind of money in a house I don't own... So, I scraped the flakiest bits of paint away, sanded a bit (I'm not very patient with sanding!), added the wooden bits between the windows and then glossed the short side. I've got the long side to do tomorrow, then it will be finished. It's not perfect by any stretch of the imagination but I think it's much better than it was!

I thought I could perhaps get some kind of fast-climbing plant to maybe put in the ground on the long side and in pots on the short side so that it can grow up the wooden frame and make it look a bit nicer. Any ideas what kind of plant would be good for this? Answers on a postcard please!!

Ooh, one more pic to share with you. It's a very dull subject but I really like it. Taken with Hipstamatic for iPhone.

More work to do tomorrow and I'll share more pics.

Kevin x

New Pics From the iPhone

2010-04-11T12:46:00.000-07:00

Well I downloaded the 'Hipstamatic' app for my iPhone after reading about it on a forum and I really really like it! Here are a few pics I've taken quickly today that I'm very pleased with...

What do you think? :D

Soapy Stamping...

2010-04-10T11:51:00.000-07:00

Hey ho!

Just a quick post... I know you're seen this soap before but I wanted to show you my soap stamp :)

I was about to send off my request to the USA for a custom stamp which would have been quite a lot of pennies that I could spend on more oils or mica or fruit powder or or or.... Anyway, I read a post on Jaq's blog about these magnetic stamps that she uses to stamp her soaps and thought it was a brilliant idea. So I sourced a tool and some stamps with the help of a few nice people on UKScrappers and this is what I've come up with. I'm really interested to hear what you think.

Kevin x

A couple of experimental soaps...

2010-04-06T13:46:00.001-07:00

Hi all,

First I have a soap scented with the LOVELY Wild Fig & Cassis FO. It's such a beautiful smell. The soap was supposed to be white and burgundy but I somehow get it to turn grey :o :o :o . Not sure if I like it or not yet...

Then there's the loofahs which I experimented with last night. I'm really happy with them overall. There's still a surface of loofah in places to scrub right from the word go. Might sell them as foot scrubbers or something similar. These are mango FO but I think the ones to sell will be mint and something. Maybe my first EO soap!

As always, comments very much appreciated :)

Kevin x

Nancy Today

2010-03-27T03:04:00.000-07:00

Good morning everyone!

Well, the sun is (kind of) out today, the birds are singing and IT'S THE WEEKEND! Woohooooo!

I just wanted to share with you all the wonders of Nancy Today. She's a lady that lives in Canada and makes soap to sell at markets. Not only that, but she makes videos on cooking, housework, raiding the dump and all manner of things.

Yes she's not the cleanest soapmaker ever, yes she does some dangerous things with the lye but as you watch her videos you can't help but giggle at her fun and bubbly personality.

Here are a few of her soap videos for you to watch. They're 'Part 1' and 'Part 2' in a series so I recommend you watch the whole lot!

Have a good weekend!

Kevin x

Lavender HP

2010-03-22T14:16:00.000-07:00

Hi all,

Here's one I cooked up earlier!

Made this the other day with my trusty coconut, palm and olive mix and this has 6% shea added as SF. As it has shea in it, I expect it to whiten up even more over the next few days.

Not as lovely looking as some of the lavender soaps I've seen, but I think I'm still pleased with it :)

Kevin x

Crazy Cappuccino & Honey Harvest Cream

2010-03-22T14:14:00.000-07:00

Hi all,

Just wanted to share a couple more soaps I've made this week.

First off, there's a coffee one called 'Crazy Cappuccino'. Dark part contains instant coffee, coffee FO and coffee grounds too.

This next one contains oatmeal, goat's milk powder and honey. It's unscented but smells of sweet honey and creamy milk. No name yet.

Finally, some pics of my soapies all wrapped up:

Hope you like 'em. Please be gentle with me, they're only my second and third tried at HP!!

Kevin x

First EVER HP Soap!

2010-03-22T14:12:00.000-07:00

I've been making soap for quite a while now but it's only ever been M&P. I've never made CP or HP so this week I set myself a challenge to do some HP and learn about the traditional soapmaking process.

Well, I did it and I didn't die or get burned or anything! wooooohoooo! I even tried to be clever and did an in-the-pot swirly. I was so so so scared of that lye. I looked a right state in my apron, pink marigolds, face mask and goggles...

I took some piccies of the whole process (after blending). If I did anything glaringly wrong please let me know.

It's scented with Blue Ice FO which is an ocean scent. The colour is blue ultramarine.

Next time I will make sure the blue is actually mixed in properly ::) ::) I also need to get some TD to make the uncoloured bits whiter...

Left overnight, I was able to cut it in the morning into these bars.

Pics are a bit hurried and not that great but you get the idea! The uncoloured bits have whitened over night but I think I would still like them a bit lighter. You can see quite badly where the blue didn't mix properly too but never mind!

Bubbles up really nicely too.

The recipe I used was a very simple one. It was:

45% Olive Oil
30% Palm Oil
25% Coconut Oil

For anyone that's interested, I used a 0.9l plastic box as my mould lined with greaseproof paper. It took a 600g oil recipe and has made 6 bars all over 110g. Not sure how much the weight will change with time though...

Kevin x

Sugar Scrubs

2010-01-30T01:33:00.000-08:00

Hi everyone,

I really wanted to try out something new this weekend, so here it is!

These are sugar scrubs formed into little cubes that you then take into the shower to use. I only had olive oil and shea so tried out different mixtures of these for the moisturising bit.

This first one is scented pineapple and the oil is 100% olive oil.

This one is scented with Adonis which is sandalwood, cedarwood and tobacco leaf. Smells very 'green', so I wish I'd coloured it to match! Still not sure I like the scent... This one is half shea and half olive oil.

This one is coconut FO and is all shea, no oil at all.

Finally, a nicely scented coffee one. Made by infusing olice oil with coffe grounds. The coffee has given a lovely pure scent with that wonderful colour and I left a few grounds in to enhance the effect. I used half infused olive oil, half shea. I think this one could be marketed at gardeners and chefs as a 'kitchen sink' remedy for dirty and/or rough hands.

Overall, I really like them. I've not tried them all yet so can't comment on each individually but I tried the coconut on my hands and they're so soft and moisturised now. They vary in hardness depending on the oil content.

Was thinking short plastic jars with aluminium lids....

Any opinions greatfully received, whether good or bad!

Kevin x

Welcome!!

2010-01-30T01:31:00.000-08:00

Hello everyone and welcome to the brand new Taonga Blog! Here I will post about many different things including new ideas, sneak peaks of new products and craft fair information. If you like this blog, please become a follower to ensure you don't miss a single post!

Kevin x