Bath Bomb Help Needed!

[Dominique]

Hi everyone!

I'm having some small troubles here. Tried much different recipes for my bombs, some didn't turn out quite well, but now I have a stable and reliable recipe that works fine. Only problem is that it has cream of tartar in it, which makes it pretty expensive to make them.

So I wanted an alternative recipe. The recipe I use right now, is having citric acid in it (pretty ovbious..) but in granular form. I was watching Lush's "how it's made' on YouTube, and found out that they use powdered citric acid?!

I wanted to try that too! Makes the bomb even float more imo, because it's lighter than the granular form, which can make the bombs pretty heavy.

I orderded the powdery form, but can't figure out what's wrong. I never, EVER had problems with the humidity here (most of the time around 60-80) and ever since I'm using the powdery form, every batch starts to react almost immediately after molding. So I decided to leave them in plastic molds to dry, but the sides are still starting to activate. Only when I put a hairtie around it, it seems to not react.

Does this has to do with the humidity after all? I never had pre-reacted bath bombs before, with the granular citric acid this never happened to me, I can just unmold them right after pressing and nothing happens. Anyone else using the powder form and having this problem?

The recipe I use with the powdery citric acid:
- 320 grams Baking Soda
- 150 grams Citric Acid (powder)
- 10 grams fragrance oil
- 5 grams jojoba oil
- 7,5 grams cream of tartar
- 7,5 grams slsa

Dominique

 

[snappyllama]

Just conjecture (disclaimer: I haven't had any coffee yet so this might not make any sense at all):

If your weight is the same on both recipes, wouldn't the recipe with powdered citric acid have more volume of citric acid than the granular one since the pieces can sit closer together? I guessing that's the difference in reaction time you're seeing.

 

[Dominique]

Just conjecture (disclaimer: I haven't had any coffee yet so this might not make any sense at all):

If your weight is the same on both recipes, wouldn't the recipe with powdered citric acid have more volume of citric acid than the granular one since the pieces can sit closer together? I guessing that's the difference in reaction time you're seeing.

yeah guess you have a point, but eventually it doesn't matter, because the granular one should react too after some time if this was the point and it never does..

 

[HappyGoNaturally]

The recipe I use with the powdery citric acid:
- 320 grams Baking Soda
- 150 grams Citric Acid (powder)
- 10 grams fragrance oil
- 5 grams jojoba oil
- 7,5 grams cream of tartar
- 7,5 grams slsa

I've never made these using cream of tartar, but, isn't that like adding more citric acid? Maybe try your recipe, skipping the cream of tartar. My recipe has always had some cornstarch in it, but I also don't use slsa; I'd like to try adding a natural suds component some day though. Anyway, just a thought, as from what I understand cream of tartar reacts with baking soda.