We made soap today!!

Hey y'all!! I tell ya what today has been quite an adventure! This morning I realized that I didn't have just Palm Oil, that I had Palm Olein Oil and unfortunately I couldn't use it in the two recipes that I had originally planned so decided to go with a recipe that came highly reccomended. So my recipe consisted of Canola, Coconut Oil, Cocoa Butter, Castor Oil (yes it's used for soap making too), Olive Oil (Ok I had extra virgin olive oil, had to make due with what I had ), water, goats milk, lye.  Ok so lets jump in with pictures here, give them time to load. :))



Adding Lye to my water

Stir Stir Stir!

Lye Water is super hot..at this point it was 203F (95C) , temp kept climbing. As you can see the water is now clear which means all of the lye has dissolved. So we cover it and put it in a safe spot until it cools down which takes forever it seems. lol

We begin melting and mixing our oils and butters. Notice I had air bubbles then, but by the time the oils and butters cooled I had gotten most of the air bubbles out.

When both the oils and lye mixture were at temp, it was time to pour the lye into the oils and begin to blend the two.

See how it begins to change when the lye and oils have mixed together? I unfortunately kept get the stick blender stuck on the bottom , and had to keep lifting it a bit but continued on like a champ.

Ok this is right before it begins to hit trace, so I add goats milk and blend as quickly as I can. At this point I should have seperated the batch and added the fragrance oils too. I was also trying to remove the air bubbles as well.

Holy crud we've hit trace quickly and from there things went south a bit.

Ok we're missing the pictures where we added fragrance oils because we had to quickly seperate this batch and I had to have hubby scent one loaf while I scented the other. At this point it hit thick trace and we were racing against the clock and no time for pictures this time.

We managed to get everything blended and poured into the molds, and wound up using the two big target load molds. This recipe that I used was bigger than I really wanted to do to be honest with you. I wanted to do smaller test batches but you live and learn.

So on the left is hubby's soap, and mine is on the right. The left is scented with Magnolia Grandiflora, the one on the right is scented with Cranberry Yuzu.

So here is the next mistake that I make.

I add plastic wrap to prevent ash from forming on my batch, which can happen on occassion.

A few minutes later I notice my husbands loaf of soap beginning to look odd.

I decide to watch it for a bit because I thought maybe it was just gelling up but I thought it was odd because mine wasn't doing that. I also thought that maybe the fragrance oil he used might have discolored altho I didn't remember the description saying it would. So while I wait I search online to be sure.

I turn around and see this happening, realized that what I did was sorta insulate it I suppose. (someone can correct me if I am wrong). With goats milk it doesn't need to be insulated, otherwise it will superheat. Silly me forgot about that.

So I am hoping that I removed the wrap in time. You get a discolor when you use goats milk, and I used equal parts goats milk and water so I am hoping that this is what is going on. Needless to say the little swirlies on top aren't there anymore because it got crazy hot. Fingers crossed that it will be ok.

Ok so I am doing my blog in The Shoppe tonight keeping an eye on this batch. I wanted to get it done this morning, but I had to go out and purchase a couple of oils that I didn't have so that I could use this recipe. I am not sure if I will use this recipe again, it was way bigger than I anticipated and castor oil is way to expensive in my opinion. I am hoping that these produce the sort of luxury bars I am hearing that they do. If not, will just chalk it up to lesson learned.
Here's how the loafs look now that they have cooled off a great deal.



Hubby's Loaf
He says don't mind the soap on the edges like that, it gives the soap character right now. lol The only oddness I am noticing is his loaf seems to be sweating oil right now. I am hoping that it is only a temporary thing. Will keep checking on it.



My loaf at cooldown stage. :)


Both loafs have at this point hardened up. I pulled away a side of each mold to look and am pleased for the moment with the exception of the sweat issue with the other loaf. I am also noticing that the top part of the side is alot lighter then the bottom when I pull the side of the mold away from the loaf. I imagine by morning it will all change to one uniform color, I hope. I am also hoping that I will beable to cut it in the morning, instead of waiting til tomorrow evening. We'll see tho.

Well folks, its a little past dinnertime and I am hungry. :) Check in tomorrow for our next adventure when we cut our soap. :)

Suds & Bubbles,
Soapy