Homemade Deodorant

Deodorant! I've been making my own for about a year and a half now and this recipe works far better than any store-bought deodorant I've tried (even the Rx-strength ones!). I started with this recipe from the Passionate Homemaking blog and made some changes of my own to it, mainly reducing the baking soda and adding Shea butter. My skin is really sensitive and these changes make the deodorant gentler. And further proof of how awesome this deodorant is, I went camping for 3 days with no showers and didn't smell like armpit!

Deodorant
6 tablespoons coconut oil
3 tablespoons Shea butter
1/4 cup cornstarch
1/8 cup baking soda

Using a fork, mix the coconut oil and shea butter together until it is smooth. If the shea butter is too hard, microwave it in 15 second intervals until it is soft enough to mix. Add the cornstarch and baking soda and mix until it is smooth. You can add a few drops of essential oils now if you want to add fragrance, otherwise the deodorant will be mostly scent-free. Spoon the deodorant into jars to apply with your fingertips, or into an empty deodorant stick for a traditional application.

Note: This deodorant will melt at warmer temperatures, so if your home is really warm you may want to store the deodorant in the refrigerator. Also, if you are going on a car trip in warm weather, keep the deodorant inside the car with you, not the trunk. Otherwise, you will have coconut oil all over your suitcase! I learned that the hard way.

Tinkerbell Cake

My daughter recently had a birthday and she just had to have a Tinkerbell party! A few years ago, she had a Tinkerbell party and I made a Tinkerbell cake with the Wilton's pan of Tink's face. This time, I wanted to do something different and this is what I came up with.

The cake itself is a strawberry cake (the same recipe for the strawberry basket cake) with purple and green sprinkles to make it a confetti cake. The frosting is the same strawberry cream cheese frosting as the strawberry basket cake, but with extra powdered sugar added to thicken it some. I made the flowers out of fondant using a cookie cutter and a toothpick to press in the lines to separate the petals, then brushed some edible gold dust (Wilton's) onto the flowers to look like pixie dust. I bought the Tinkerbell doll at Target in the toy section, since I thought it was cuter than the cake-topper Tinkerbells. All the kids loved the cake! 

I was originally thinking of giving out fairy wings to the girls and pirate swords to the boys during the party, but decided against it since the wings would get caught on everything and I'm sure someone would get hurt by a plastic sword. Since I want all the moms to still like me, I bought eye patches for the boys and made bell bracelets (since Tinkerbell's voice sounds like a bell to humans) for the girls instead. The bracelets were super easy, I just used stretchy sting and little bells! 

Reusable Panty Liners

I have been busy the past few months, so busy that I haven't had time to post what I've been up to! Between weeding my flower beds (where do the weeds keep coming from?!?!?), house work, and taking cake decorating classes (more on that in a later post), it has been hard to find a spare moment.

Last night, however, I finally finished up a sewing project I had started several months ago for reusable panty liners. I saw the pattern for them here in Hillbilly Housewife's website a while ago and at first the idea grossed me out, but after a while the disgust turned to curiosity. What would it be like to use cloth liners? Lots of people use cloth diapers for their babies and they don't seem to be grossed out by the clean-up, or at least not enough to stop using them. So with the Hillbilly Housewife pattern in hand, along with some old flannel baby blankets and towels, I set to work on making some panty liners.

This project was really easy to do, which is nice since I am not really an experienced sewer. I followed the basic directions in the pattern and for the inserts I sandwiched a piece of dish towel between 2 pieces of flannel baby blanket. I would definitely recommend following the suggestion in the pattern to use darker flannel since it hides the stains better. I had a bunch of light pink flannel blankets from when my daughter was a baby, so I went ahead and used those instead.

They were easy to make, but were they easy to use? The answer is yes! They are so comfortable, since they are just soft flannel. They are more bulky than disposable liners, but they breathe better and don't ruin your panties with adhesive strips. And washing them really isn't that bad, either. I just rinse them out in cold water and wash them in my regular loads of laundry.

To make your periods super "green" switch out your tampons for a Diva cup or other menstrual cup, then Aunt Flo will be virtually waste-free!

Have you started your seeds yet?

If you plan on having a vegetable garden this summer, now would be the time to start your peppers and tomatoes, since they take a while to get going. That is exactly what we did tonight, started our jalapenos, bell peppers, and tomatoes. There are seed starter kits out there and sure, they look all fancy with their plastic trays and little balls of peat moss, but why pay for those when you can DIY your own starter pots?

I saved some cans, almond milk cartons, and to-go cups from restaurants (anything that would work well as a pot), then added some potting soil and the seeds and viola! A seed starter kit for the cost of a bag of potting soil! Make sure to label your containers, that way you know what is growing in each one.

This picture is full of DIY/reuse ideas. See the glass in the top left corner? That has some green onions growing in it. I found the idea on Pinterest, basically you take the white bulb ends of green onions that would otherwise be tossed, put them in a glass of water and they should grow. Then you just snip what you need as you need it. Pretty neat, right?

The table itself that the "pots" are on is a make-shift table made from an unused closet door and two sterilite bins. My daughter has LOTS of Legos and she really hated having to take apart her creations to get them back in the bins. So we decided she needed a table of some sort where she can play with her Legos and leave her creations out and out of the way. We looked at coffee tables, but it just seemed silly to pay $200 on a coffee table for Legos. This table, while not stylish, is definitely affordable (free!) and green since we are reusing what we have.

Bean and Mushroom Soup

I still have lots of marinade left over from the portobello sandwiches and the marinated chicken, so I decided to take Isa's (from the PPK) advice and add it to a stew. I love bean soups; they are easy, versatile, and cheap. Normally when I make bean soup I toss in whatever I have on hand and play with the spices, so every batch of soup is a little different. To make things a bit more complicated, I never write down what I do for ingredients, so if a batch is super good I have no way to easily recreate it. This time I decided to live life on the wild side and actually wrote down what I tossed into the ol' crock pot!

The soup was really good, the marinade added a nice savory flavor and it reminded me of a beef stew (but without the meat!). The marinade added so much flavor I didn't have to add any spices, just a little bit of pepper and salt. I sliced up the mushroom stems from the portobello sandwiches and added them to the soup and they added a nice texture. It would probably be even better with sliced mushroom caps instead of stems, but that was all I had.

Just for my own curiosity, I decided to measure the water I added when the beans were soaking and measure it again in the morning to see how much they absorbed. The 2 cups of dried beans absorbed 2 cups of water, so I'm guessing you could just increase the water in the soup by 2 cups if you don't want to soak the beans overnight.

Bean and Mushroom Soup (inspired by PPK)

2 cups dried mixed beans
3 cups vegetable broth
1 cup water
1 cup “Perfect Grilled Portobellos” marinade from Veganomicon/The PPK
1 large carrot, chopped
2 ribs celery, sliced
1 ½ cups chopped kale or escarole
1 small onion, chopped
1 tsp minced garlic
1 ¼ cups mushrooms (I used the stems of the portobellos)
Salt and pepper, to taste

Soak beans overnight it warm water. In the morning, rinse beans thoroughly and add to crock pot. Add all ingredients except salt and cook on high for 4-6 hours or low for 8-10 hours (I usually cook on high for about 4-5 hours then switch the crock pot to low until dinner time). When beans are cooked, add salt, if desired. Note: If you forget to soak your beans, add an extra 2 cups hot water to the crock pot and cook on high for 8-10 hours.

Add some gluten-free drop biscuits (or regular if you aren't gf) and dinner is served!

Marinated Chicken and Mushrooms

In my last post I told you about the portobello mushroom sandwiches I made. Well, the marinade was so good, I just couldn't throw it out! So, I poured the remaining marinade into a jar and stuck it in the fridge. I looked through the comments of the post on the PPK to see if anyone posted any suggestions for other uses of the marinade and I found a few. One commenter said that they marinade chicken in it and, since I have a freezer full of chicken, I decided to give it a try.

Now my photography skills are not that great, but please don't let the terrible picture fool you. This chicken was delicious! Here is the recipe:

Marinated Chicken and Mushrooms (inspired by PPK)

2 chicken breasts
1 – 1 ½ cups mushrooms
1 – 2 cups leftover “Perfect Grilled Portobellos” marinade from Veganomicon/The PPK

Fillet each chicken breast in half lengthwise to make 4 thinner fillets. Place fillets in an oven-safe dish, add mushrooms and enough marinade to thoroughly coat everything. Let marinate for 1 hour, flipping chicken occasionally so both sides are marinated. Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Bake for 30 minutes or until chicken is cooked all the way through.

Isa from the PPK also recommended marinating tofu and tempeh in the marinade or adding it to stews. I still have a lot of marinade in the fridge, so I think I will try a stew with the rest of it!

Delicious Portobello Sandwiches

There is a restaurant in my area that makes the best grilled portobello sandwiches, but since finding out I am gluten-intolerant, their sandwich is off-limits to me. Luckily, my sweet husband bought me Veganomicon for Christmas and it has a recipe for grilled portobellos (which can be found online at the PPK!) that taste almost identical to the restaurant's. And since the marinade is made from scratch, I can modify it easily by using gluten-free soy sauce!

To copy the restaurant's sandwich, I took the Veganomicon portobello and added roasted tomato aioli from Bobby Flay, caramelized red onions, grilled red peppers, and avocado, all on top of toasted gluten-free buns. The most time-consuming part was the aioli, but that could easily be omitted to make this a quick meal.

I meant to take a picture of this beautiful sandwich, but we ate them all before I could!

Strawberry Basket Cake

Last week, I needed to make a cake and I wanted to do something different, something that wasn't too complicated but still looked impressive. I've seen cakes that were surrounded by Kit-Kat bars and filled in with M&M's and they look great, so I used that idea as my starting point. Since I was making a strawberry cake with strawberry cream cheese frosting, what better than a basket of strawberries?


Making the basket was super easy, I just bought a bunch of Pirouettes, trimmed them down a bit so they were about an inch taller than the cake, and stuck them all around the cake.

The handle was a bit tricky and I think it would have been easier if I had made it before frosting the cake (then I could have checked the size of it without getting it all covered in frosting). Basically I cut and "glued" Pirouette pieces together with melted chocolate and put it on the cake. I cut the long pieces of Pirouettes at a 45 degree angle, which helped the pieces stick together.

To finish the cake, I tied ribbon around the Pirouettes to make sure they stayed put and tossed some sliced strawberries on the top. I'm impressed with how it turned out!

Want to know what recipes I used? I found a great from-scratch strawberry cake recipe on Food.com and a yummy strawberry cream cheese frosting recipe on Lemons and Anchovies.

What Time Is It? Adventure Time!

I made this cake for my husband's birthday and he loved it! Despite being fully-grown adults, we love cartoons and video games. I got the idea for this design on Polyvore, which you can find here. This cake is based on the Cartoon Network show "Adventure Time" which is about heroic adventurers Jake the dog and Finn the human and their awesome adventures in the Land of Ooo. The show is full of family-friendly silliness and fun! Originally I was going to attempt a "Venture Brothers" cake but the artwork in that show is beyond my skill level.

Experiments With Buttercream

Usually when I make cakes I just frost them, write a name on them, and call it good. Since joining the cake charity in October, however, I've been trying to learn how to make more visually appealing cakes. The cakes below are some of my experiments.

For this cake, I plopped on a bunch of buttercream and made random "S" shapes in it with a spoon. I thought it turned out pretty cute. And to give proper credit, I found the idea for this on Country Living's website, which can be found here.

For this one, I did the same as with the cake above, but did the "S" swirls in a pattern instead of randomly on the cake. I think I like the random look more.


I kept this one simple, I just piped stars all around. It's simple but still nice.


This cake didn't turn out how I had hoped. Those sad little piles of blue are suppose to be roses, but something went wrong. Maybe my frosting was too warm, maybe it's because I don't have a flower nail, or maybe it's just my lack of skill. Either way, I need to keep practicing.


Other than the stars being off-center, this one turned out pretty well. The stars at least look like stars!

Here is the frosting recipe that I love to use. I like how it has a nice buttery taste but stays creamy.

Almond Frosting

½ cup butter, at room temperature
½ cup shortening
1 ½ tsp vanilla
½ tsp almond extract
4 ½ cups powdered sugar
3 - 4 tbl almond milk

Variations: add 1/3 cup unsweetened cocoa for chocolate frosting; omit almond extract and increase vanilla to 2 tsp for a classic vanilla buttercream

Cream together butter and shortening in mixer. Add vanilla, almond extract, and 1 tablespoon of milk, mix well. Add powdered sugar and remainder of milk, mix until smooth. If frosting is too thick, add extra milk, 1 teaspoon at a time.

Fun With Fondant

I am part of a wonderful charity that provides birthday cakes to individuals who otherwise would not get a cake, such as foster children, hospice patients, veterans, and people in assisted living communities. I usually make two cakes a month for the charity, sometimes more, sometimes less. The following are some of the better-looking cakes I have made using fondant.

A quick note about fondant, fondant and I have a bit of a rocky relationship. We are still in the "getting to know each other" stage and aren't too sure about one another. He is very finicky and kneady, while I can be impatient and don't always respect his delicate nature. He is very popular and I hope we can make it work. The cakes below are the good times we've had together.

(Please forgive the sloppy lettering, I have terrible handwriting!)

This cake was pretty easy, I just pressed the fondant into a mold to get the rose and leaf shapes then added them to a buttercream frosted cake. The real trick here was trying to get the fondant out of the mold without completely destroying it.

For this cake, I covered the whole thing in marshmallow fondant then added red fondant dots. This was my first attempt using fondant for the whole cake and I think it turned out pretty nice. It was a bit of work though, rolling out the fondant and trying to lay it smoothly over the cake without ripping it.

This cake was so much fun to make, all of the make-up is made out of fondant! I used marshmallow fondant for all the black, the eyeshadow, and blush since it had more of a matte finish and used a buttercream fondant for the lipsticks and nail polish since it had more of a shine.

The marshmallow fondant recipe I used can be found here and the buttercream fondant recipe can be found here.

Welcome!

Hello World!

My name is Beka and welcome to My Homemade Adventure. I have lots of things that interest me, including cooking, baking, gardening, and crafts. I'm not an expert on any of this stuff, just a housewife learning new things and sharing them with you right here. I am excited to start posting fun projects, recipes, and tips!