#christmascandles #christmasbaking #makinghomemadegifts #poundcake
Friday, December 12, 2014
So Christmas isn't creeping up slowly anymore; it's coming on like a fast freight train, and both Alison and I are scrambling to finish all the various and assorted projects on our (too long lists).
I had a cake to make, and Alison worked on Christmas candles. While we were working we printed labels, wrapped soap, and ordered soap making materials. Yes, we can multi-task.
It's not soap making but the following pictures will show you a little of what we did.
These are the ingredients for a decadent almond/lemon pound cake I made. Alison mentions the recipe in her recent blog entry, too. Can you tell we love it?
The recipe is from a co-worker's wife in my previous job. She makes tons of these in loaf size at Christmas each year, and when she gave me one last year, I and tasted it and honestly drooled. It is SO good that I've tossed my traditional Whipped Cream pound cake for this one. Really, it's that good.
I mixed all the ingredients (butter, margarine, cream cheese, cake flour, sugar, eggs, almond flavor) and put them in a cold oven, set it at 300 degrees and let it rip for 1-3/4 hours.
This is how it looked in the oven.....baking away, smelling so good.
Out of the oven, picture perfect!
After it cooled a bit I whipped up some confectioners sugar, milk and lemon flavoring
and drizzled it over the top. The lemon flavor mixed with the almond pound cake is
part of what makes this one so good.
Now on to the candle making...
First thing was to melt old wax out of some nice containers. We shop thrift stores and yard sales and find beautiful "used" candles and containers for practically nothing. Once we clean them and pour new wax into them they look brand new again.
We used Sugared Spruce fragrance oil from +Rustic Escentuals. We have made soap using this scent and it smells great, but it has a lot of vanilla which turns the soap dark. In candles it won't make a difference since we are coloring them green.
The scent is described as follows: Has notes of stately Blue Spruce, earthen moss, warm cedar wood, and balsam wood rounded out with a base of vanilla and caramel butter with sweet berry hints, cassis, and sugar crystals.
We used two different greens, mainly because one of them wasn't Christmasy enough.
We started out dropping the color flakes into the melted wax a few at a time, checking the depth of the color as we go.
We dripped bits of wax on a piece of paper to see how the color changed each time we added the color flakes.
Not sure if you can tell the progression, but the drops of wax got progressively darker as we added more color flakes. We finally got what we wanted. The one right in the middle is the final color.
This is a quick photo montage of us mixing in the fragrance oil.
After letting the wax cool just a bit, it was ready to pour. We keep our candle holders in a bath of warm water. We find that the wax hardens more evenly and the candles look better if we don't pour the hot wax into a cold container.
We hot glued the wicks into place, then used tape to keep the straight while
the candles cooled and hardened. Aren't these containers pretty?
We poured very carefully
trying to avoid spillage (as much as possible).
And we ended up with several very pretty, amazing-smelling candles.
Pictured above are some of the finished candles after they've had time to cool and harden.
We are so excited to be able to give gifts like these!
Merry Christmas!
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