Monday, November 29, 2010

Peppermint Soap

I love the smell of peppermint.  At present I have two peppermint oils from two sources and they smell so different.  One has a sharper note and the other one is more mellow.

When I think of mint, I usually think of green and so another green soap.  This soap was inspired by a very charming soap, but this turned out so different from what I had aimed for.  Well, keep trying and I will definitely get it right some day.

I love using chlorophyll color for green.  Lesson learned, you need quite a fair bit to make it green, this one is very soft.



Used mica on top for the swirl effect, nice green but does very different.


Thank you for reading.

Tuesday, November 9, 2010

Rebatching Soap - Crock Pot vs. Double Boiler

There are a few ways to rebatch.  Here are a couple; double boiler and crock pot

The first batch consisted of 2 failed batches of soap, the first one I left it on cure rack for 2 weeks and the second batch was quite new.  I grated the soap together but separated the white and pink, then put it in the double boiler over gentle heat.  It took nearly an hour and a half to dissolve.  Then I mixed the two parts up, perhaps too much, because the colors just blended together.  The texture looks acceptable considering I used 33% lye solution with no extra water when rebatching.


In the second batch was a new soap fresh out of the mold.  I planned for orange and yellow soap, but the colors disappeared, so another rebatching opportunity.  And since I wanted to know if there is any difference in  the texture of soap using crock pot to the one done in the double boiler, I decided to give it a try.  The crock pot had higher heat than the double boiler.  Soap did stick to the side of the pot a bit more.  However, it used less time, only about an hour.

I added more color at the end of the cook, since there was little color to begin with, but still not much showed up.  Perhaps I needed more orange.  This is the result:



Personally I prefer the texture of the soap from the double boiler.  How about you?  Which is your preference?  Would really love to hear what you think of these two methods or if there are any differences.  O was it just me?

Monday, November 8, 2010

Vanilla Cream Soap

Here we sometimes use lard for cooking, but after hearing so much praise about it in soap, I decided to give it a try.

Here is the recipe for this particular batch, hope it will be gentle with plenty of bubbles as lard is said to give big bubbles.

Olive Oil             35 %
Lard                   40 %
Coconut Oil        10 %
Cocoa Butter      15 %

It's said that lard takes a long time to trace, and since this batch contained both olive and lard, I decided to go for the extreme 42% discounted water.  Even with this steep discount, it took quite a while to trace.

I was not going to color this as I know the F.O. will discolor, so I added whipped cream, honey and colloidal oat at trace.  Also made some textured top to add some excitement to a rather plain looking soap and a little gold mica for fun.

This is how it looked when it went into mold.



I have left this batch to cure for a month now, the soap discolored beautifully and it smells so good.



Now all I have to do is wait a couple more months before I can try this.


Thank you for reading.