Chocolate Coffee Cupcake Soap

I wanted to make cupcake soaps so that I could take them to the reunion, but I just couldn't find the cupcake molds.  I searched through the cupboards and the entire area, still couldn't find them.  So I gave up and made soap in the little coffee cups instead.  

I did add a tiny bit of discoloring fragrance oil to the whipped part.  I am still not sure what the color of the cured whipped top will be like.  Hopefully it will darken slightly but not too much.  

Just my luck, today when I looked inside the cupboard to get the mixing machine, I found the cupcake molds neatly stored in a box in the cupboard.  

In The Log Swirl

I saw this method of swirl last year but now I want to try to make it with lots of colors.  Did this with the best behaved fragrance oil I have, in 6 colors.  Though I have not perfected the technique, it was still pretty successful.  I could pour the whole thing (24 layers in all) without it setting up on me.

It was fun to make but the outcome was not so good as can be seen here.  I wonder what could possibly cause this?

Rose Soap

A friend asked me if I could make her soap with rose pattern on top.  It seemed to me quite difficult as I am not very good at drawing, so that was on hold for quite a few months.  Until I saw a tutorial for roses soap by Lovin' Soap.  Tutorial

I tried to make the swirl but the soap traced and thicken too fast to do the swirl properly.  What I could do was to make the pattern on top of the set soap.  Not quite what I had in mind as I like my swirl to blend in, but the outcome is acceptable and more important my friend likes it.

Colored Lip Balm

I have just bought new jars for balm and am excited to use them.  Last time I did the balm, it had quite strong coffee smells, I like it, but some mentioned that they ddin't.  So might as well try a new formula.  This one has less coffee butter, so no coffee smell and the color is much lighter.  

Since I have some rose essential oil and found out it is lip safe so here is the balm.  Added some mica to get this shade of rose.

So this is how it turns out.

Quite like the color, but would love to find out, how to make other shade as well.

Coffee Butter Lip Balm

It's been a while since I last updated the blog.  Last two months were chaotic.  Now things are slowly getting back to normal.

Last year, I made lip balm as a New Year gift, and it was quite a success.  So this year I would like to make some more but I didn't have any flavor oil.  I have coffee butter, and it smells wonderfully strong, and also read that it does come through in lotion and lip balm creations.  So I decided to give it a go.

Here is the recipe:

Carnuaba Wax    2.5 g
Beeswax             4.5 g
Coffee Butter         9 g
Cocoa Butter         6 g
Castor Oil         12.5 g
Jojoba Oil           3.5 g
Squalane             3.5 g
Wheat Germ          8 g
Vitamin E            0.5 g

1.  Melt oil & butter together in a microwave or over double boiler.
2.  Remove from heat, add vitamin E.  Pour into mold.

This balm was tinted with dark chocolate to give it a bit of color, the chocolate smell did not come through, only coffee did.  Some use a bit of lipstick to add color.

This recipe is not fixed, you can play around with it, but the balm may have different feels to it depending on the oils & butters.  I use lots of oils because I have many oils that I want to try, but if you don't have any of these, just substitute the liquid oils with oils that you have on hand, e.g. olive oil, rice bran oil, coconut oil.

I just got some nice lip balm jars, so will be making colored lip balm just to see how pretty it will look.

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.

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?