Thought I would add a little bit more about our soap adventure. We have been using the same recipe (which I will post below) more or less and it amazes me how little things can change it so.
So we made two batches and the one batch we split in half and the other batch we split into fourths. Our trace came very quickly tonight and I think it's because our oils weren't too hot, they were only about 100 degrees and the milk/lye mixture wasn't too hot either. Because we only blended with the stick blender about 5 mins or so instead of 20 or more, so that was a great discovery.
The flavors we made tonight were, well we don't eat it so technically it's not flavors it would be scents using essential oils, the EO's we used were; country vanilla/lavender, peppermint, cucumber melon, sage/citrus/orange, stress relief/litsea/few drops of lavender and then one with no eo but just raw honey and oatmeal. It should take about 4 weeks to harden or longer. The longer you let it cure the harder the bar of soap is.
I used a new mold tonight that says "goat milk soap" on it. Too cute!! The colors that the EO's change the soap too is also fun to discover. The sage/citrus and orange mixture came out a tan-ish color and the peppermint is snowy white, the honey/oatmeal looks golden like honey, the vanilla/lavender had redish streaks in it and the stress relief/litsea is an off white creamy color. We thought that the difference in the color after adding the EO's was partly due to the batch of soap, but this proves that wrong, because we split one batch into batches.
Will post some pictures of the soap in their containers. Tomorrow I will take out of the containers and cut into bars and then let them cure on racks from which I was using for my cakes (but not anymore). Love the smell in my room, the different scents waft through at different times, maybe for what I would be needing at that time.
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| close up of the Oatmeal/Honey |
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| This is the "goat milk soap" 8 bar mold |
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| This is the Peppermint batch, we just use different plastic containers |
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| Country Vanilla/Lavender |
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| The little cups are the Cucumber Melon and they came from juice drinks given at a school lunch. The long mold is the Sage/Citrus/Orange. I made this mold and it works great. You line it with wax paper and it lifts right out |
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| This is the Oatmeal/Honey. It's in a big Tupperware container The recipe used for the soap is called the "walmart" soap We use the 64oz of Lard 15.75 oz Coconut Oil 15.75 oz Olive Oil (pure) 16.50 oz of Sunflower Oil the recipe says 28-34 oz of liquid and we use 30oz of Goats Milk 16 0z of Lye for a whole batch you could use from 3oz - 7oz of Essential Oil we usually use about 3-4 oz, it seems to be enough. That's all for now. |
