Healthy gummy fruit snacks you can feel good about giving your kids

My 2 year old goes ape$#@! over fruit snacks.  I mean, he'd literally eat the entire box of 10 pouches in one sitting if I'd let him.  The bad part?  They can barely be considered fruit.  The box I had in the house made me cringe when I read the ingredients.  "High fructose corn syrup, fruit juice from concentrate, dehydrated corn syrup, sugar…"  Yes, those are truly the first four ingredients.

So I made healthy gummy fruit snacks today on a whim. They turned out great!  You'll need:

A high speed blender (or a blender and a saucepan)
1/4 cup lemon juice
1/4 cup lime juice
1 orange
Real maple syrup (or other sweetener of your choice, like honey, agave, or liquid stevia)
spinach
2 cups of strawberries (fresh or frozen, doesn't matter)
1/2 cup of blueberries (same as above)
5 tbsp of powdered unflavored gelatin. 

Put 2 cups of strawberries in your Vitamix.  I left the tops on.  Throw in one whole peeled orange, the lemon and lime juice, the blueberries, and a handful of spinach.  Not too much so that it turns green, unless you don't care about the color.  Blend for a while until smooth.  Taste it and if it's really tart start adding sweetener until you like how it tastes.

Now blend it on high for 5 minutes or until steam comes out of your Vitamix.  Turn the speed down to around 4-5 and add the gelatin.  If you don't have a high speed blender, pour it into a saucepan and heat it until it's hot but not boiling.  Just enough so that the gelatin will dissolve.

Blend until there are no chunks or clumps of gelatin, and then you can either:

a) Pour into a large, shallow baking dish.  Stick it in the fridge for an hour or two and then slice it up into squares, or even use a mini cookie cutter to cut out shapes.  Or...

b) Pour into really cute little silicone molds.  I have been accumulating them from Amazon for quite a while.  They're not very expensive, they don't have to be greased first, and you can use them for making bath bombs, soap, chocolates, other candy, gummy vitamins, ice cubes, you name it.

I only have two trays of the little hearts, one tray of medium sized random shapes, and a couple large muffin sized pans.  So I had to use them all to use up all my "batter."  This made somewhere around 35-40 oz of batter.

Put the trays into the fridge and let it set up for an hour or two.  Then pop out of the molds (or slice up your pan, and/or use the mini cookie cutters) and transfer to a resealable plastic bag.

What's the shelf life?  I have no idea.  I'd think a week or so in the fridge since it has no preservatives but I doubt it will last that long in my house!  Next time I'll try it with some flu and cold busting ingredients to help the kids stay well this winter.

The way my toddler goes through fruit snacks I'll feel much better giving him these.  He happily ate two of the huge, muffin sized ones at lunch today and was begging for more!

DIY bathtub fizzies for kids

I keep making bath bombs for myself and my kids keep stealing them.  I had bought some little tablets that color the water for my toddler, but then I looked at the ingredients.  Ew!  Seriously?  This stuff is safe for two year olds?  

So I decided to make some especially for the little ones.  It's really easy and requires only one ingredient that's out of the ordinary (at least in my household.)  

Ingredients

1 Cup citric acid (I buy it in the bulk food section at Whole Foods or on Amazon)
2 Cups baking soda (I buy it in bulk at Sam's Club or Costco and it's a huge bag for $6 or so)
4 Tbsp epsom salts (bought at the dollar store)
1 ounce coconut oil or other light body oil like sweet almond or apricot
Essential oil for fragrance - go easy since this is for kids
Food coloring - I found some that were neon bright colors.  You could also use soap coloring drops that you can find at craft stores.  I've used them before but they don't seem to color the bath water, just the bath bombs themselves.
Spray bottle of witch hazel (another Dollar Store find)

Mix the baking soda and epsom salts in a bowl with a whisk.  Get it all really well incorporated and break up all the clumps.  Note:  A lot of recipes use cornstarch.  I find it good for one reason only - it makes your batch of bath bombs go farther.  Instead of making 12 it might make 16, for example.  But it gets everywhere, there's dust in the air that you're breathing in, and I feel like I need to wear a gas mask while I'm making these.  So I don't add cornstarch.  Problem solved.

Next, add the coconut oil (or almond, or apricot, or even plain ol' olive oil) and stir.  The small amount of oil makes your skin really soft but it doesn't leave a ton of oil in the bathtub after the bath.  I LOVE getting my toddler out of the tub after a bath.  He's so smooth and soft and he smells so yummy!  

Then add the food coloring (I used about 15 drops of the neon blue) and your fragrance oils (I used a few drops of Warm Vanilla and a few drops of Lemon - it smells like cookies!  You can omit the fragrance altogether, of course, or you can do eucalyptus and rosemary to clear sinuses, lavender to help them calm down before bed, etc.  I'm no expert on aromatherapy.  I just use what smells good.)  Stir well.  I mean, REALLY well.  The food coloring seems to clump up into the coconut oil so it takes quite a bit of stirring to make it evenly distributed and not mostly blue with big blue clumps here and there.

NOW we add the citric acid.  Every other recipe I've ever read says to add it to the baking soda in step one, but then when you add your liquids it starts to fizz.  So on a whim I didn't add it till the end.  NO FIZZING AT ALL.  I must say, I'm a genius sometimes.

Now we grab the witch hazel.  It works much better than water for helping the mixture bind together, and it softens your skin too.  Spritz the mix 3-4 times and stir.  Grab a handful and make a snowball.  If it sticks together you're done.  If it's too dry and crumbly spray a few more times and try again.  Don't overdo it or your citric acid will start fizzing and then your bath bomb won't fizz much later.  You'll probably need about 8-12 squirts of witch hazel.

When it's done you're ready to fill your molds.  I have these cute silicone molds I bought on Amazon.  They're really just muffin pans with fancy shapes and they come in different sizes.  

I use them for everything - baking, homemade fruit snacks, homemade chocolate, and bath bombs.  You can also use plain muffin tins. They're plain but they work fine.  So grab your muffin pan, put some of the mixture in and pack it down like brown sugar.  Then fill it the rest of the way and pack it down again.  Try to make it flat across the surface.  Fill as many molds as you have mixture.  For me this makes 6 large bath bombs and 30 of the little hearts.

Here's my favorite trick:  preheat the oven to 200 degrees.  When it comes to temperature, turn it off.  Put the silicone molds on a cookie sheet for stability and stick them in the oven.  Leave them in the warm oven that is TURNED OFF for several hours.  This really helps them dry out faster, especially if you live in the hot and humid south like I do.

After several hours take them out of the oven and turn them upside down onto the cookie sheet.  Leave them there to dry overnight on the counter if possible.  You might even be able to use one that evening if you let them sit in the oven for at least 4 hours.

I usually drop two little ones or one full sized bomb into the bathwater when I go easy on the food coloring.  This turned out pretty bright blue so we'll see what it does to the water tonight at bath time.  They fizz like crazy but they have never turned the water blue before so here's hoping I'll get lucky this time!

The hardest part is keeping him from trying to eat them as they're fizzing in the water.  But as far as I have learned, none of the ingredients are toxic (just taste really nasty!) in small doses.

Here we are, fizzing away.  I dropped two of the small hearts in.

If this kid would ever talk he'd be saying, "Look, mama, it's blue!!!"

I threw one more in for good measure and voila, that's some blue water!  Didn't stain the tub or towels either.  Happy baby, happy mom.

DIY Lush Bath Bombs - Lust Fragrance Hack

Ok, anyone who's ever been in a Lush store knows the distinctive fragrance.  I can walk into a mall and immediately tell if there's a Lush store in there somewhere.  I love the smells!  But I hate the $6 per bath bomb price tag.  I don't think my husband and I have ever gotten out of there for less than $50, and that was a cheap trip.  Sigh...

So let's do it ourselves!  I've made several batches of bath bombs lately and they're so easy!  And fun too.  It's like making cupcakes and sand castles rolled into one.  My 9 year old daughter helped me yesterday and we had a ball.

There are a hundred recipes floating around on Pinterest but here's the one I like best so far.  I've tried with and without arrowroot powder (which I used as a substitute for cornstarch because I had it on hand and didn't have cornstarch) and it works just fine without it.  Since it seems unnecessary I just leave it out now.

Ingredients

1 Cup citric acid (I can't find it locally so I buy online - $10 for 2 lbs)
2 Cups baking soda (buy it in bulk at Sam's Club or Costco and it's a huge bag for $6 or so)
4 Tbsp epsom salts (bought at the dollar store)
1 ounce coconut oil or other light body oil like sweet almond or apricot
Essential oil for fragrance
10-30 drops food coloring
Spray bottle of witch hazel (another Dollar Store find)

Mix the dry ingredients in a  bowl with a whisk.  Get it all really well incorporated.

Then add the body oil and stir.  The small amount of oil makes your skin really soft but it doesn't leave a ton of oil in the bathtub after the bath.  Then add the food coloring (I used about 30 drops of a peach color hoping it would turn more orangey but it never did, so I could have stopped at 10) and your fragrance oils, and stir well.  I find that the oil doesn't make the mixture fizz but sometimes the food coloring does, so add it a drop at a time.  The more your mixture fizzes now, the LESS it will fizz in the tub later.  (The Lush Lust recipe is at the bottom of the page, so keep reading!)

Now we grab the witch hazel.  It works much better than water for helping the mixture bind together, trust me.  Spritz the mix 3-4 times and stir.  Grab a handful and make a snowball.  If it sticks together you're done.  If it's too dry and crumbly spray a few more times and try again.  Don't overdo it or your citric acid will start fizzing and then your bath bomb won't fizz much later.  You'll probably need about 8-12 squirts of witch hazel.

When it's done you're ready to fill your molds.  I have these cute silicone molds I bought on Amazon.

They're really just muffin pans with fancy shapes.  I use them for everything - baking, homemade fruit snacks, homemade chocolate, and bath bombs.  I also have silicone muffin pan liners and they worked great for this too.  They're plain but they work fine.  I don't make spheres because you'd need at least a dozen molds since you want to dry the bath bombs in the molds.  This keeps them from cracking apart as they dry.  If you pack the mold, dump out the bath bomb, and then use the same mold to make the next one the bath bombs don't seem to hold their shape nearly as well while they're drying.  So grab your muffin pan, put some of the mixture in and pack it down like brown sugar.  Then fill it the rest of the way and pack it down again.  Try to make it flat across the surface.  Fill as many molds as you have mixture.  For me this makes 12 smallish and 6 large bath bombs.

Here's my favorite trick:  preheat the oven to 200 degrees.  When it comes to temperature, turn it off.  Put the silicone molds on a cookie sheet for stability and stick them in the oven.  Leave them in the warm oven that is TURNED OFF for several hours.  This really helps them dry out faster, especially if you live in the hot and humid south like I do.

After several hours take them out of the oven and turn them upside down onto the cookie sheet.  Leave them there to dry overnight on the counter if possible.  You might even be able to use one that evening if you let them sit in the oven for at least 4 hours.

Ok, let's talk fragrances.  You can do whatever fragrance combination floats your boat, which is the cool part.  The first time I made bath bombs I did lemon and tangerine.  I used orange food coloring.  Just enough to color the bath bombs and slightly tint the water, but not enough to stain your tub.  Probably 6-8 drops total.  Next I tried spearmint and rosemary with green food coloring, and I used dried rosemary sprigs to make it look cool too.  Put the rosemary leaves in the bottom of the mold before you fill it with your mixture.  Dried rose petals would also be gorgeous.

But the holy grail of fragrance for me is Lust at Lush stores.  According to their web site, it's made from jasmine, ylang ylang, rose, sandalwood, and vanilla.  The jasmine scent is intoxicating.  (Don't even get me started on the Godiva solid shampoo bar.  It's so fabulous I just want to eat it.)  You can buy the perfume from their web site and use that if you like, or just make your own.  I found all these oils for less than $16.00 on Bulkapothecary.com by buying the smallest sizes.  I threw in two pounds of citric acid for another $10 and my whole order before shipping was just over $25.00.  Not bad!  I'll get easily over 100 bath bombs out of two pounds of citric acid.  ***Updated to add: these are fragrance oils, not pure essential oils.  If you buy essential oils the cost will be higher but they will not be artificial.  So it's totally your call.  These tiny bottles have lasted me forever too.***

When trying new fragrances, I mix one drop of each in a bowl and give it a sniff.  Make a list of the fragrances on a piece of paper and put one tick mark next to each.  Then add more of whichever scent you feel is lacking. Update your paper with tick marks next to the ones you added.  (I happen to have a Lust solid fragrance stick in my cupboard to compare it to, so that was very helpful.)  When you're happy with the result your paper should have tick marks next to each scent so that you'll know the ratio to use next time.

Here's what I used and although it's not an exact duplicate, it's pretty darned close!

Lush Lust Fragrance Hack

30 drops jasmine oil
15 drops ylang ylang
25 drops sandalwood/rose blend
20 vanilla sugar

I estimate it cost something like $5 to make 18 bath bombs, which makes them 46 cents apiece.  The citric acid and essential oils were the biggest chunk, but everything else (like the baking soda and apricot oil) cost very little.  Score! Now I just need to find a cute container to store them in.  A plastic baggie really doesn't do them justice.