Soulful Blends and Desert Friends: Its Party Time!

Soulful Blends and Desert Friends: Its Party Time!: It just so happens we put on a pretty good party here at Soulful Blends central. And really, what could be more fun, then hanging out with f...

Its Party Time!

It just so happens we put on a pretty good party here at Soulful Blends central. And really, what could be more fun, then hanging out with friends, making your own perfumes and lip balms and enjoy a facial will our all natural products.

Here's how it works:

We have two types of parties, a Potions Party and a Show And Tell Party.  Depending on what you are looking for, you can pick either one, or combine them to have both. You can hold the party at your place or a friends place but if room's a bit tight, we can hold it here at Soulful Blends central :)

Show And Tell Party

We begin this party with a bit of 'me time' pampering. You'll experience and learn how to give yourself a soothing face massage with our very own Face Oil range to both cleans and moisturise.

At our Show And Tell Party, you'll also get to sample many of the Soulful Blends products like body moisturisers, cleansers, face moisturisers, essential oil diffusers blends, foot balms, hair putty, perfumes and our all natural castile soaps. We'll even provide 'bubbles' and some healthy alternative snacks to boot!

Potions Party

At this party, you'll get to make your own essential oil perfume/cologne scent sticks. A great 'all natural' alternative to conventional perfumes and cologne.

You'll also get to make your own all natural lip balms with flavours ranging from, choc mint, peppermint, vanilla choc, pink grapefruit, milk chocolate and white choc.

You and your guests will receive a party bag including customised labels with your names featured on both scent stick & lip balms.

Finer details

You can hold the party at your place or a friends place but if room's a bit tight, we can hold it here at Soulful Blends central :)

The Show And Tell Party is for adults only

To order a Potions Party you'll need to have a minimum of 8 participants who will make both a lip balm and scent stick. More than one lip balm and scent stick can be made by any participant.

The minimum age for the Potions Party is 13years old. Should you want this party for teenagers we'll require adult supervision at all times. For teenagers parties, we cap numbers at 10 participants and 12 for adults parties.

We have a few more details regarding our parties which we can discuss if you'd like to proceed.

What now

So, if any of this sounds just a little bit interesting to you (hehehe), we'd love to hear from you. You can contact us via our FB page and send us a PM at any time.

My Kind Of Chocolate Cake (no sugar & no gluten)

I love the the internet! It makes having healthy options so accessible. This recipe is adapted from the many cake recipes I've researched over the years and tweaked to my liking. Its rich, fluffy, and as a treat, pretty healthy. I promise, no sugar and no flour.

2/3 cup coconut flour or almond flour

1/2 cup organic cacao powder

1/2 teaspoon baking soda

1/2 teaspoon Himalayan or Celtic sea salt

6 eggs

1/2 cup unsalted butter (soft or melted)

3/4 cup maple syrup

1/2 cup milk

1 tablespoon vanilla extract

1 teaspoon of cinnamon powder

Half a cup of rasberies

Preheat oven to 180 degrees

Grease cake pan and line the bottoms with greaseproof paper.

Combine dry ingredients (coconut flour, cacao, baking soda, cinnamon and salt) and put aside.

Whisk the eggs in mixer

Add remaining wet ingredients to the same bowl (butter, maple syrup, milk and vanilla extract and continue to mix until combined.

Add the dry ingredients into the wet ingredients.

Mix on low until all ingredients are combined (its a thick mixture)

Add mixture to the pan.

Press individual raspberries into mixture (while in pan) and push them down until submerged into the batter.

Bake for 25 minutes or until a knife inserted in the center comes out clean.

Allow to cool for about 30 minutes.

Icing

Two cups of berries (any kind you like)

Too heaped tablespoons of mascarpone or thickened cream

Using a blender, blend berries until a liquid.

Add mascarpone or cream and combine until ‘pink’.

Dollop on cooled cake and evenly distribute. It will be slightly runny on the sides.

This cake keeps well in the fridge for a couple of days (not that it will once you taste it, you'll be going back for more until its all gone)!

Chocolate

Chocolate

Ive got some pretty good memories of me and chocolate. We go way back! Chocolate has been with me through the good times and bad. Quite simply, I love chocolate.

So when we decided to move away from foods containing sugar, preservatives, chemicals and flavourings, rightly so, I felt a little anxious about what this meant for chocolate and I.

My anxiety was soon put to rest with a bit of internet research. After some enjoyable experimentations in the kitchen, not only was our relationship secured, but I found out that I could let go of the guilt often experienced after eating chocolate. In fact, this new stuff was actually good for me! You know its true what they say about long lasting relationships, they get better with age.


















It makes so much sense that my first blog involving food is about chocolate. I wouldn't have it any other way…

The great thing about this recipe is that it can be modified to suit your needs. For example, every now and then, I might add Maca or Camu powder or vitamin E crystals. I jokingly call it our 'medicinal' chocolate. The kids still love it and it tastes great!

Ingredients

5 tablespoons of virgin cold pressed coconut oil

3-5 tablespoons of unsweetened cacao powder dependent on how bitter you like it

5 tablespoons of desiccated coconut or a bunch of crushed up nuts or combination of both.

1-2 tablespoons of raw honey (depends how sweet you like it really)

1 pinch of Celtic or Himalayan salt

1 teaspoon of vanilla essence.

1 teaspoon of cinnamon powder

Method

Get a small pot/saucepan and add a cup of water and boil. Once boiled, turn the heat to low.

In a glass or stainless steel mixing bowl add all the ingredients (the kids can help with this part).

Place the bowl (with all the ingredients) on top of the pot/saucepan. Note: the bowl shouldn’t touch the water. (Kids probably shouldn’t be helping with this part if young).

Stir till combined and it has an even liquid consistency.

Poor mixture into molds (I get mine from places like Daiso/2 Dollar shop/Pound Shop), but if you have a small flat glass dish/trey (10 cm by 15cm) you can use this.

Place in the fridge for half an hour to set.

This chocolate will melt once out of the fridge, so be sure to scoff when taken out!

If you have kids, they will really enjoy being a part of the process and you'll start to create some new chocolate memories minus the guilt! 

We made these delicious little treats yesterday so I think its time to head on down to the kitchen for a little sampler and a cup of coffee to boot!

Oh, and the clean up photo here… yeah, it actually did happen, they cleaned up after themselves. I was gob smacked! See, only good things come from chocolate.

Enjoy it and LOVE it! 

You can find us on Facebook here.

A Real Soap Story

A Real Soap Story

The tale of how Soulful Blends began

Something just felt so right about exploring life outside the ‘mamahood’ once the twins turned two and a half. I was in Australia at the time, visiting my family when all these ideas about Soulful Blends starting to swim around in my head! Nick, myself and the girls had been through so much change in the past two years both with moving to the middle east, and radically adjusting our lifestyle so the idea of starting something new again was almost too much!

While visiting my sister (the very talented Lanie Lane) and her equally talented beau, Jez Mead, at their cottage in beautiful country Victoria, ideas and concepts started to become all that more real. One night over good food, wine and a bit of singing around the fire, I poured my heart out about my passion for an all natural approach to living well. Jez wrote it all down. I still have that piece of torn cardboard with his notes and doodles hanging in our ‘lab’ (more about that later). I wonder if Lanie and Jez even realize the relevance and importance of that night– well I guess they do now! A little switch of motivation for something I believed in turned on that night, and its been keeping me going ever since!

With that realized, in conjunction with our existing health kick well and truly established, we figured it was time to start experimenting with natural alternatives to home and body products. Once we returned home to the UAE that summer, we hit the books to find out everything we could about soap.

Ever looked at the ingredient list on store bought cosmetics and soaps…? Yeah, I can’t pronounce most of them either…. As it happens, I’m married to a scientist who has come in pretty handy for translations! Needless to say, as we move toward a less toxic lifestyle, soap as we knew it had to go. In its place, castile soap. But even then, we found that some shop bought castile soaps contained some nasty ingredients. Not to be disheartened, we took on the challenge to make our own.

Okay, so maybe it’s because I’m not the scientist in the family that I experience it this way, but making liquid castile soap has been by far the most challenging and complex thing we’ve made so far. Here’s my crash course on how soap is made. The short and simple list of ingredients on our bottle is as follows: “Saponified extra virgin olive oil, Pure Essential Oils & Sea Salt”.  Saponification is a term used to explain the reaction between an oil and an alkali (so in this case, lye and extra virgin olive oil). While an alkali is used to create saponification, none of it remains in the final product. The final product is neutral (for soaps) with a pH reading ranging from 9.5 – 10.5. A little secret for all the Dove users out there; you know their advert that tells you their product is PH ‘5.5’ as a selling point… well that stuff isn’t soap. It’s a synthetic detergent! True natural soap will have a PH reading ranging from 9.5-10.5. I’ve discovered that most of the ‘soap’ out there is in fact synthetic detergent based solvents. I know, its so disheartening when you find this stuff out, because it really makes you question what else out there isn’t what it appears to be on the outside.

So, our eyes have been well and truly opened here at Soulful Blends and we’re diving in headfirst with new and exciting projects. When it comes to what we put in and on our body we need to know what it is, and if we can make it more naturally. We’re making it our mission to find out, and we love the journey so far!

You can find us on Facebook here.