Mocha soap

Seems a while since I made any soap, and yet I have still not used any I have made as the first batch is still curing. It will be 4 weeks of curing at the end of this week however, and I think it is nearly ready! Exciting! But to keep me amused in the meantime, I quite fancied trying a coffee based soap.  Here is the ingredient list which I used:

• 306g olive (pomace)
• 306g coconut oil
• 72g avocado oil
• 126g rice bran oil
• 90g shea butter
• 127g lye
• 254g cold brewed coffee

• 2 tsp white Kaolin clay
• 3 tsp white TiO2 powder
• 2 tsp cocoa powder
• 2 tbsp used coffee grounds

I have not used a clay before so thought I would give it a go - have no idea how much I should have put in, so I must confess that I guessed!  I wanted to make a dark soap which represented the coffee but with a lighter swirl in it, hence the cocoa powder addition for the darker colour, and the whites for the lighter.  

The chilled brewed strong coffee was used as water with the lye being added to that. It did smell a little burnt or just odd when lye was added but hopefully that won’t come across in the soap. The lye solution was dark, but I thought once added to the oils that it might end up a caramel colour so I decided to darken it with cocoa powder. This also adds a nice twist of making it a mocha soap!

At light trace, I removed a portion of soap out into separate container (around a cup/250ml) and to this the clay and titanium dioxide was added to lighten the soap (soap was brownish) - did not make white but lightened into a lightish cream colour. The cocoa powder was added to the larger remaining batch of soap to make it a darker brown, and I mixed in the used coffee grounds into this for a little texture!

One both were ready I poured the darker soap into soap a lined loaf mould, then poured the lighter colour soap in from a height (so it would sink) and mixed a little with skewer in to attempt a swirl effect (see pic above).

the frustration of soap curing...

After now having made several batches of soap, I find myself very frustrated and impatient while I wait on the curing process to complete. It has only been 3 weeks since I made the my first soap batch, but it seems like much longer.  From my reading, I am sure that some soap types will take longer to cure than other but how long?!? The length of time would not be a problem if I knew what to expect from each of the different oils, essential oils and colouring, but as I am still a little unsure how it is all going, I am keen to try them out.

As a scientist, I have become increasingly unhappy about the just waiting a recommended set amount of time until curing should be done - surely different climates and storage environments will have an effect of speed of this, so back to the internet I went. I found this great blog post from Adventures With The Sage written in 2013 which suggests a simple answer to my concerns - cue cards! The idea is simple - weigh the same bar of soap from a batch regularly and record the weight. When the bar stops losing weight (i.e. losing water), then curing is complete and the soap is ready to use.

I have knocked up some of these cards, and am now weighing the sap batches every day or so.... we are still losing a little weight each day - around 0.2-3g ish.  

Juicy orange soap with attempted swirl!

I was so pleased with the outcome of the scented lavender soap, that I was excited to try another essential oil as well as incorporating some colour!  I followed a recipe from the soap queen which had the following recipe:

• 280.66g coconut oil
• 280.66g olive oil
• 280.66g palm oil (responsibly and sustainably sourced)
• 93.55g rice bran oil
• 130.41g lye
• 306.17g distilled water
• 28.35g orange essential oil (I used 5 fold oil)
• white titanium dioxide powder
• paprika

Method

Added the lye into the water, mixed until dissolved, then allowed to cool to 130F.  Weighed out and melted the solid oils (coconut and palm), then added the rice bran and olive oils.  To prepare the colours, I mixed 3 teaspoons of powder with approx 3 tablespoons of olive oil (each power separately!).  Once the oils and lye solution were both at 130F (recipe slightly higher temp than normal), the lye was added into the oils and blended until a light trace was reached.  I then poured around 500ml of the soap 'batter' into a separate container and mixed in the paprika to colour it, then the orange essential oil  after the colour was mixed.  In the original pot I added in the white titanium dioxide and mixed.  I used a spoon to mix in the colours and oil as I was worried about the better getting too thick too quickly if I used the stick blender. I then poured the orange coloured batter into the white in 4 places  - this was done from quite high so that it would get deeper into the white batter.  

To create the swirl, I used a skewer and mixed the orange and white in a circular motion. The original post said to do this only once, but I ignored this as once didn't look enough (I should have listened perhaps!).  The soap batter was getting quite thick by this point and I was worried it would get too thick if I took much longer! Finally I poured most of it into a silicone loaf mould, and the rest into a cylindrical pipe mould which I lined with acetate paper for easy removal.

Results!

I removed the soap from the moulds after around 30 hours.  The silcone mould is great!  The soap loaf just peel away easily from this.  The acetate sheet stuck a little more than I hoped to the soap, but it did allow easy removal from the pipe.  When removing the acetate, it pull out small round bits which makes the soap look like there were air bubbles on the outside (but there wasn't!).

I was a little worried when I saw the large soap loaf out of the mould as it looked like the swirl was... well not very swirly! After cutting though, the swirls looks a lot better... but I think I still overdid it!  

The soap smells of orange as I had hoped, but it is quite a sweet orange - a little like jaffa cakes!  It is very nice, but certainly sweeter than I expected!  The only problem I had was when mixing the titanium dioxide powder. It was very hard to remove all the lumps, and it seems that after cutting I wasn't as successful at this as I had hoped!  It is probably not possible to see in the pictures, but on some of the bars there are white drag lines from where the knife has cut through some white colour that has not been mixed too well.  I plan to invest in a small milk whisk and use this for pre-colour mixing next time! 

For some reason I was quite stressed when following this recipe! Not because it was particularly hard to follow, but I think I was panicking about the batter getting too thick to work with after splitting it and adding colour etc. Anyway, it was quite stupid to get so stressed out and I must confess that my remedy of a gin and tonic (x2!) helped chill me out!

Castile soap with lavender - first use of essential oil!

After making the batch of castile soap (last post), I decided to use the same recipe and add in lavender essential oil and dried lavender into the soup.  This is my first experiment with essential oil therefore I thought best to go with a small test batch:

• olive oil - 272.10g
• lye - 34.4g
• distilled water - 85.47g
• lavender 40/42 essential oil - 15ml
• dried lavender - did not record weight - judged by eye!

The method was exactly the same as in previous post, but when trace was reached, I poured and stirred in the essential oil and dried lavender with a spoon. Since this was a small batch, I used a homemade mould (cleaned out cocoa container!).  The soap turned out white with lavender distributed nicely through it, and smelling of lavender (no real surprise there!). I am pretty pleased with the result!

One thing to note was that the dried lavender changed to a brown colour which was due to the heat of the soap during saponification. 

Updates and Castile soap

A quick update on the coconut milk soap which had turned green inside after I unwrapped and cut it.. it has been curing now for over a week and the green colour has disappeared and the soap is completely white.  The smell has also gone and smells unfragranced (if that is possible!)!  I have been doing a little reading a think the problem with the discolouration in this soap was caused by insulating the mould after pouring.  Soaps that include milks or yogurts do not need to be insulated as this can cause the milk proteins to discolour and change colour.

Castile Soap

Castile soap, traditionally made using only olive oil, is a hard whiteish vegetable soap.  Although there are many variations on recipes, I decided to use a recipe using only olive oil and lye:

• olive (pomace) oil - 907g
• lye - 114.82g
• distilled water - 284g

The method involved added the lye to the water, mixed to dissolve and setting aside to cool down to 110F.  The oil was heated and when both the lye solution and the oil were at 110F, the lye solution was poured into the oil and blended until trace was reached.  The soap block was insulated and left for around 48 hours before cutting.  

When I removed soap from the mould, the colour was not uniformly white (see pics).  Again, after doing a little further reading, because of the high olive oil content, the soap may need 3-4 days and may not need insulated (although I am not 100% sure about that yet!).  After cutting I also noticed a thin light white layer on the top of the soap.  I am not sure yet whether this is 'ashing' or simply this part has dried more - I have cut this off half the soap bars and left on the other half and will see what happens as it cures.