Tags
Bar Soap, Bath & Body, Coconut, Etsy, Foodie Fumes, Jasmine Rice, Series, Shea + Cocoa Butter, Thai Sticky Rice
There’s a running joke between my parents and my husband. The subject of sticky rice leaves them laughing in stitches. My husband couldn’t get enough of this sticky sweet concoction at my parents’ house. He ate it every morning for breakfast. The parents were shocked when this Northern Irishman slathered his sticky rice with Nutella. Completely unorthodox! (He’s on to something, it’s actually quite good!) From then on, the first thing my parents would say to my husband is, “Sticky rice?”. They would bust out in belly-aching laughter and I would feel all left out.
Suman (pronounced soo′ • mahn) is a rice cake dessert from the Philippines. This Filipino version of sticky rice is made from gluttinous jasmine rice soaked in coconut milk and steamed in banana leaves. The taste is extraordinary! It’s a sweet, creamy coconut palate pleaser. The banana leaf gives the rice a slightly minty and almost tea-like quality. Every time I eat this dessert I have fond memories of my grandmother. She knew it was my favorite and would always prepare sticky rice with coconut jam during visits. The aroma of suman while steaming in the bamboo basket is delectable. My mouth would water before walking through her door because you can smell the delightful aroma wafting outside her kitchen window.
If they made a perfume based on this scent, I would totally buy it! Naturally, out of curiosity, I was on a hunt for it and was delighted to discover that a handmade vendor called Product Body sold cocoa butter soap in Thai Sticky Rice! They are the only people who make soap in this flavor! Believe me, I searched high and low. Eager to smell it, I ordered it immediately. I also thought it would make a great gag gift for my husband. Knowing him, he would probably eat it.
Suman: A Filipino sticky rice dessert made with coconut milk steamed in banana leaves.
Description:
Have You Had Thai In A While? Get Your Sticky Rice Now
Around here we love the sweet coconut sticky rice you can get in authentic Thai restaurants. And it’s not just the flavor, it’s that smell. So after many attempts, we finally recreated it for our soap line. The aroma of toasted jasmine rice with a touch of sweet coconut make this scent special and unique.
Packed with pure cocoa butter as well as shea, this is a deeply moisturizing bar that lathers up beautifully and smells gorgeous.
Ingredients: Saponified oils of olive, coconut, cocoa butter, organic palm, shea butter, palm kernel, castor, and fragrance.
Notes: toasted jasmine rice, coconut
Scent: This does smell like sticky rice! Pretty straight forward, nothing complex. You can smell a slight toasty coconut and a powdery, buttery, creamy rice. However, I was disappointed how weak this scent was. I wish it were stronger. From the bar, it was very faint. When lathered it was stronger but it didn’t fill the air with sticky rice. Oh well.
Lather: It has an o.k. lather.
Cleanliness & Moisture: This soap makes you feel squeaky clean. (If you’re into that sort of thing.) I know some people are into the squeaky clean feeling. My definition of squeaky clean is when you run your finger tips along your body and your fingers skip. If that makes any sense? I don’t like this feeling. I like feeling clean but squeaky clean makes me think my natural oils were stripped. Maybe there’s no rhyme or reason to my conclusion but after I took a shower and dried off, I immediately felt like I wanted to slather on a vat of moisturizer. It left my skin somewhat dry which is a surprise. Since it’s made with cocoa butter and shea cream, I was expecting some kind of moisturizing effect.
Sillage & Longevity: No projection. No longevity.
Would I buy again? I wanted to like this soap because of the scent. Unfortunately, I don’t like the way this soap makes my skin feel. So no buy.
Pricepoint: $
Final Verdict: Great scent but faint. It felt like it stripped my skin of oils but that’s just me. If you like squeaky clean, this soap is for you. For me, Product Body Thai Sticky Rice Cocoa Butter Soap gets an overall rating of MEH.
Product Body Thai Sticky Rice Cocoa Butter Soap: Available at Product Body
Here’s the recipe for Filipino sticky rice if you’re feeling culinarily adventurous: Suman - Sticky Rice in Banana Leaf
okay now I’m hungry!
Hi Frida,
LOL! Sorry about that!
What a disappointment! I love the smell of coconut sticky rice (thanks for educating me on the Filipino name), and when I read the title of your post, I was pretty excited. Too bad.
Hi Natalie,
I know too bad. I was pretty psyched.
Hope you’ve settled into your new home!
One of my favorite deserts is sticky rice with mango. I love the scent and had been thinking of purchasing this exact bar of soap. I’m so glad you were honest with your review, as I will now scratch this one off my list. My blog partner recently tried Body Product sample soaps and commented that most of the soaps were overly scented. Ha. Wouldn’t you know, the one we’d like to have more scent, doesn’t.
Hi Lynda,
Nice to see you on here again. LOL! It’s like that with perfume! I notice the perfumes I dislike smell the strongest and last the longest on my skin. I can’t seem to scrub it off. Vice versa with some perfumes I love.
Nice blog! I’m the reviewer Lynda mentioned above. I read on the Product Body blog in October that Joanna’s last batch of this soap was in her shop and she was discontinuing it; it sounds like these bars have begun the aging process. If you happen to see any soaps in her Magic Hands Workshop section that look appealing, those guys are really strongly scented.
Hi Jean,
I was wondering if I got a bad batch or something. It’s too bad she’s discontinuing the scent, she’s the only one I’ve found that does it! Oh well. I’ll check out her Magic Hands Workshop section. Thanks for your suggestion!
By the way, I have the same skin-parching experience with Product Body too. (I get a little miffed when soapers promote their products as having all these moisturizing ingredients and I can’t use them…is it me, or have they not tested their formulas on other people?) Anyway, I tucked mine away for about a year and it did make them gentler. I guess the curing process continues.
It is misleading. Maybe they do test but opinions are biased b/c they are mostly friends and family? Who knows.
To clarify — the Magic Hands line, inherited by Product Body from a retired soaper, is excellent all around for me. Highly scented and great conditioning.
I am so sad that you did not like our soap. Stripped? really? Jean and olfactoryobsessed: I am surprised and utterly embarrassed. I get email after email filled with “oh my gosh, my skin has never had such soft-like-a-baby-butt feeling and my “insert skin disorder” has disappeared!”
I would like to offer to send you something new if you would like to try… get in touch with me.
So sad….
Hi Jo,
Happy to be a tester of any new formulas to represent us dry-skin types, if you’d like.
Jean
Count me as a tester too, Jo! I’ll email you my address info.