Making Tallow Bath Bombs

DIY fizzy, scented bath bombs with tallow

While soap dates back to 2000BC and various skin moisturisers, creams, oils date back even longer, almost 7000 years, the round, fizzy, scented bath bomb is much more recent than that. It is much more recent than coffee, which, to myself, came as a surprise that it was only found in around 1500AD.

Bath bombs are in fact as recent as the 20th century, in 1989 in fact, when the founder of Lush Cosmetics, Mo Constantine invented the first bath bomb in her garden shed.

Lush, photo by Justin Lim on Unsplash

The inspiration for the bath bomb were the fizzy Alka-Seltzer tablets, and the first successful bath bombs were originally called “Aqua Sizzlers”.

The Alka-Seltzer tablets have been around for about 90 years and they are fizzy, effervescent pain relief tablets which quickly dissolve in water, based on Aspirin.

My little cricket (my son) is crazy about bath bombs. He would use one every time.

Photo by Herbs Basics on Unsplash

I admit I was not too interested in trying to make them, because it just somehow sounded difficult and I always assumed the ingredients would not be easy to come by or would be some strange chemicals.

In fact, the ingredients are very simple and easy to find and they create a fun fizz in the water, just like the store bought bath bombs. And to them you can add a few drops of essential oils and other good-for-skin products.

The baking soda and citric acid create a chemical reaction when you drop the bath bombs into the water. This creates a really fun fizz. Then the epsom salt get slowly dissolved, and the essential oil aroma is released. 

Epsom salts are relaxing for the body and together with the warm bath water, can ease tired muscles.

If you don’t have a bath, you can also use them in the shower, either drop one on the floor and enjoy the scents released, or hold it in your hand and gently rub the foaming fizz on your body.

Homemade Bath Bombs

This was the very first try, I still have a batch drying in the molds (see below)

Ingredients

I’ll write this in cups, imperial instead of metric, to the utmost chagrin of my chemist husband, because the ratios are more important here than the exact grams or cups.

• 1 cup baking soda

• 1/2 cup citric acid

• 1/2 cup cornstarch

• 1/4 cup Epsom salt or sea salt

• 1/4 cup melted grass-fed beef tallow

• about 20 drops essential oils (peppermint and lemon in these)

Method

1. Mix all the dry ingredients together in a larger sized bowl.

2. Add in the melted tallow and essential oils. Mix well together until well combined. You can mix with your hands. If you are wearing nail polish, it is better to use some gloves, because it might be damaged by the citric acid.

3. With a spray bottle, spray the mixture with water or witch hazel (I used water) until the ingredients hold together when squeezed in your hands, like wet sand. Only do one spray at a time.

4. Press the mixture into both sides of the bath bomb molds and then put the two halves together. Wipe the excess mixture off the sides and set it aside.

5. Allow the molds to sit for 24-48 hours or until completely dry and then pop out of the molds.

For molds I recommend using either plastic eggs which are split in half or the more suitable aluminum shapes sold especially for the purpose. You can get them at very reasonable prices on Temu or Aliexpress.

I read on a number of sites that you can use silicone molds. Well, I couldn’t, the bombs would simply not pop out of them as they should have and just made an awful mess. I ended up just scraping all of it out in a box, spraying it again and putting it in the aluminum round molds as soon as the package I had ordered arrived.

For the color I used Mica powder, which is a naturally occurring mineral that is ground into a fine powder, resembling very fine glitter.

It’s important that you are very careful with the water spray. I was somewhat enthusiastic about the water spray (I sprayed two or three times instead of one) the other evening and I ended up with a fizzing, bubbling, watermelon scented pink volcano.

A view of my kitchen counter

Needless to say, that batch was ruined. At least partially, because I rushed the cricket into the bath and just gave him two large handfuls which he happily held in his hand while they continued to fizz away.

The rest doubled, tripled, quadrupled in size so it ended up flushed down the toilet.

A part of my brain half expected to find an eruption of pink snow outside this morning as a result of it blowing up the septic tank all over the garden. Luckily that was not the case. The garden only had another thick fresh layer of snow waiting to be shovelled.