Step by step to making your own skin serum using Snow Fungus
The genesis of the ‘skin serum using snow fungus’ episode was our earlier foray into cooking with this beautiful fungus, in Episode 2. Our research threw up lots of recipes using Tremella fuciformis - they weren’t all about eating this mushroom however, many were focused on creating anti-ageing beauty products. Why not, we thought? So, here it is - our journey into making tremella skin serum and a face mask.
Tremella skin serum
You’ll need some dried snow fungus, saucepan, filtering equipment (sieve, funnel, and coffee filter or similar), and amber dropper bottle. We sourced our snow fungus from an Asian grocery store.
1. Soak and gently massage your Tremella mushroom in filtered cold water (no chlorine) in a bowl to remove any impurities. Rinse and soak a few times until the tremella water is nice and clear.
2. Chop the mushroom into smaller pieces. Cut out the hard centre and discard.
3. Place the clean mushroom in a saucepan and add enough water to cover it and allow it to expand. Put the lid almost on, and simmer for 30 minutes stirring occasionally.
4. Add more water to cover the mushroom as it will take up water during the simmering. Simmer again, without the lid, for another 30 minutes.
5. After 1 hour, filter the mushroom mix through a stainless-steel sieve over a bowl, pushing liquid out of the snow fungus as you go. Discard/compost the mushroom bits, and keep the liquid.
6. Return the bowl of collected liquid to the saucepan, and bring it back to a simmer. No lid. You are reducing the liquid down a long way.
7. After most of the water is evaporated, pour the remaining thick liquid ‘serum’ through a paper coffee filter or similar into a bowl. This is to remove any small mushroom bits that got through the sieve.
8. After solution has been filtered, pour it into a dropper bottle. Now it’s ready to use as a serum on your face.
9. If desired, you could add a small amount of your favourite medicinal mushroom tincture to the serum. We added some home-made reishi tincture – extra ‘ooomph’ for our beauty serum! A recipe for DIY reishi tincture is in the previous blog post.
You can store bottles in the fridge. Use your serum within a couple of weeks though, as the bottle and dropper are not sterile and there are no preserving agents added.
Making a face mask!
You’ll need rice paper sheets, vegetable glycerine, filtered water, and your Tremella serum.
Get rice paper sheets, and cut them into squares – you’ll be placing the squares on your face once they are soaked, so imagine how many you will need. And what shapes.
Transfer some serum into a small bowl and add your other ingredients. The ratio to use is equal parts of all three: say, one tablespoon serum, one tablespoon of vegetable glycerine, and one tablespoon of water. Mix together.
Place the rice sheets into the liquid and when soft, place them all over your face and rub any excess serum into your skin.
Leave for a while. Then enjoy that satisfying feel of peeling them off to reveal your glowing nourished face!
