Epsom Salt Bath Cakes

I posted last month that I was going to make shower melts (click here for bath salt ornaments) for gifts but then I didn't follow up with how they turned out...because they didn't turn out! They do smell good, and the benefits are still there - they just didn't harden into the little cubes I was expecting. Never fear, they are still useful...just not very pretty gifts haha, and I can't really set one in the shower for the steam to melt it like I planned. So I put all the mushy cubes in a clear container and now just scoop out a bit and add to my bath water. I scented them with Doterra "breathe" respiratory blend which seems perfect this time of germy-cold year - click here to see how to make them and let me know if you have better luck getting them to stay in cubes! I will probably make these again and just not bother making them into cubes, I like just adding a scoop to the bath.

Having said all that, I did make a different bath salt thing that totally worked and I'm loving - these bath salt cakes. I found the recipe at epsomsaltcouncil.org and didn't change anything (shocker, I know.) - I have been using these cakes for a couple weeks now, I will definitely be making more of these in the future and want to experiment with "frosting" them...I'll let you know how that works out. For now, here's how to make these easy epsom salt cakes (I'll tell you how I did it, if you want additional instruction or info check out the epsom salt site):


Combine 4 cups of Epsom salt with 3 tablespoons of water. Mix in 1 teaspoon of olive oil; add 10-15 drops of essential oil (I combined lavender and grapefruit) depending on how strong you like your fragrance. Add food coloring until desired shade is achieved. Note: when you bake the salts, some of the fragrance and color will evaporate so you might want to go a little heavier with both. Mine turned more white around the edges after baking, but are still a light pretty blue and smell great.

Coat the inside of a 12-count muffin mold with a little olive oil. Divide mixture evenly among the muffin cups. Firmly pack the mixture - I tamped the mixture down as hard as I could using the bottom of a small glass -  and bake at 150' for one hour.

Note: their directions say to avoid hotter temperature because they could melt the salts, but my oven doesn't go lower than 170' and that worked just fine.

Let cool fo 20-30 minutes, turn pan upside down and gently ease the cakes out of the mold. Place the bath salts in a glass jar to store - I gave a few as gifts, stacked on top of each other and put in a clear treat bag, tied with a label and bow. Super cute.