Every Mid-Autumn festival, bakers start making lots of mooncakes for the yearly festival. Whilst making mooncakes, the bakers will use excess dough from mooncake skins, shape them into little pigs and place them in woven baskets to resemble pigs in cages. This is to save the mooncake dough from being discarded way, and also sell them for a much lower price to those who cannot afford a mooncake.
Pig in basket is a delicious biscuit that tastes similar to the mooncake, just without the filing and does not contain pork. So why the pig biscuit idea, not rabbits, cats, or mice? According to Chinese auspicious saying, “water flowing in a pig cage” symbolizes wealth flowing into your pocket, therefore it is a good way to wish one wealth and prosperity.
Original pig baskets were made from bamboo, and used to bound and transport pigs for sale. Tradition follows and bakers use woven bamboos to mimic the pig basket idea, but now they have evolved into cute little colorful plastic cages. These adorable pig baskets usually served their purpose after we are done gobbling the biscuits up. Since we end up throwing them away, why not reuse them to create little gifts instead. Hence, we decided to collect each basket after eating the biscuits to create our very own dinosaur soap in a basket. Of course, you can put any animal or shape in the basket, just as long as it fits. You can also create your mini bath bombs, mini lotion bars to fit it in to, the sky’s the limit!
Place diced white soap bases in a Pyrex jug and melt at high level on microwave in short bursts of 30secs until fully melted. Mix in the fragrance oil then pour the mixture into the mold, allow the soap to sit and fully harden before taking it out of the mold.
What You Will Need:
- 300g Soap Base
- 3g Strawberry Fragrance Oil
- Few drops pink colorant
Additional Tools:
- Pyrex jug
- Mold of your choice
- Pig baskets
- Stirring rod or any ice cream stick
Tips:
- Spray rubbing alcohol on the soap after pouring it into the mold to prevent bubbles from forming.
- Allow soap to harden at least 1 hour before taking them out from the mold.
- You can use any type of melt and pour soap base and fragrance oil of your choice.
