In ode to my recent travels to Nashville and Kentucky I’ve mixed up a blend of bath salts, salt, sugar and tea that would make a sweet gift for Mother’s Day or for that savvy southern lovin’ soaker. ElizabethW makes a theraputic sweet tea bath salt that probably blows this one away, but hey, this one is homemade, inexpensive and easy to toss together without too much fuss.
When my little cousin came up to visit from South Carolina a few years back, she said,
“Don’t ya’ll have sweet tea up here”?
It has since caught on up here in the northern states, but back then, I had to tell her,
“sorry, no sweet tea, but we do have kool-aid…or pop…”
Sweet tea on the menu is just a given in many of our southern states. I made sure to order a tall glass when I sampled the Nashville hot chicken and I can testify that it went down down real nice with the delicious and spicy southern dish.
Now, I don’t claim to be some bath salt mixologist. I just felt inspired, so I followed a few bath salt recipes on Pinterest and added a tweak or two.
DIY sweet tea bath salts (Basic Recipe)
4 cups Epsom salts
1 cup kosher salt
1/2 cup sugar
20 drops of real lemon extract (or lemon essential oil if you have it)
1 small cup of hot tea steeped with 2 tea bags
- – Mix together the Epsom salt and kosher salt in a bowl
- – Add the lemon extract to the salt mixture and stir
- – Separate 1/4 of the salt mixture and add the 1/2 cup sugar to that portion
- – Add one teaspoon at a time to the larger portion of the salt mixture until it is slightly moist and tea stained in color. I used about 4 teaspoons of tea total.
- – Funnel some of the darker salt mixture into a jar and than a bit of the sugar/salt mixture on top and then continue to alternate until jar or see through container is full.
- – Cover with a lid right away to maintain the lemony-tea scent.
- – Store in containers or plastic bags until you are ready to put into jars or containers (if you aren’t going to do so right away).
Sweet tea bath salts optional methods
I did not do any of the following in my batch, but I would not turn my nose up at trying these options in my next batch.
Add BROWN food coloring to DARKEN the salts by mixing together:
7 drops red food coloring
4 drops yellow food coloring
2 drops green food coloring
Mix colors together and then add a few drops at a time until dark enough (test on a small bit of the salts first to make sure you like the color and that it looks like tea, just sayin’).
Use instant tea:
Instant ice tea, the unsweetened kind can be very potent and would make a good alternative.
Use essential oils:
I used lemon extract because that is what I could find, but there is such a thing as lemon essential oil, not to mention a variety of other essential oils that would really boost the aroma.
Thanks for all the good times, my dear southern states. I hope to be stopping by again soon.
In the mean time I’ll be soaking up the sweet memories as best I can.
Hope you all are having a great day my sweet-teas!! ~ Amy
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heather f says
These look so gorgeous! I heard a man at Starbucks a few days ago telling the barista exactly how to make his drink, and it was 8 squirts of *whatever*, then he said, this is how he gets as close to the taste of sweet tea as I can out of the south. I realize I should have asked him what his recipe was, because I was curious, but then I would have had to talk to him, because he was a real chatter, and I was on a schedule and didn’t think I could disentangle myself quickly enough if I initiated a conversation.
Mel says
Sweet tea is not something we have here or we call it something different but I am a tea drinker, I rarely have coffee so I would try it. I bet the bath salts feel amazing on the skin. Nice than wet tea bags over your eyes 🙂
Feral Turtle says
The first time I ordered iced tea when I was in the U.S., It came as a cold tea, without sugar??? I didn’t care for it at first as I was a big fan of canned iced tea or the sweetened powder form of iced tea that we get in the grocery store here. After a few days, I actually liked it without sugar. That was quite a few years ago. Now, I drink my hot tea without sugar and hardly ever drink Canadian style iced tea. I wonder if your southern sweet tea is the same as our Canadian Iced tea? Love your bath salt recipe. It sounds so relaxing! Pinning!!
Bliss says
News Flash: Minnesota woman drowns in empty bath tub. It was discovered she drank the water.