Skip to main content

Choco soap

I haven't been making soap in months!!! I thought I wouldn't remember, but it's like riding a bike: you never forget. 

The initial plan was to test a recipe with 15% cocoa butter, to make an in-the-pot swirl and some piping on the top.

Total oil weight: 800 gr
Water as % of oil weight: 28 %
Superfat: 7%
Water:Lye Ratio 2:1
Fragrance/e.o.: NONE
Soaping temperature: Oils @ 62 °C, Lye @ 65 °C
Mica: Hot Chocolate (swirl and flowers on the top*)

*the flower plan failed, see below :-/

OIL/FATS
Olive Oil (pomace) 25 %
Palm Oil 25 %
Coconut Oil, 76 deg 25 %
Cocoa Butter 15 %
Castor Oil 5 %
Almond Oil, sweet 5 %

Everything went well with the in-the-pot swirl! 
On the other hand, the brown-colored batter I left in the pastry bag has become pretty thick and I couldn't pipe the flowers on the top of the soap... when I squeezed the bag the batter clogged the piping tip...
I gave up with the piping and put the soap to rest overnight.
Today, when I took the soap out of the mold, I was very happy because of the bar hardness, but when I cut it I had a bad surprise... some slices cracked...
I'm sure I didn't forget any oil or weighted the wrong amount of oils/lye, so I'd say the soap is not heavy in lye... Could it be the cocoa butter???

According to other soap makers, yes, it could be the cocoa butter... I don't care about the horrible shape of the soap if I can still use it...can I?

Comments

Popular posts

Card making and papercraft magazines

Last month I had the chance to get, for the first time, a couple of Cardmaking & papercraft  magazines: Papercraft Inspirations and Make Christmas card magazine. Papercraft Inspiration December issue had a Christmas window build-a-scene embossing folder and stamp free gift, as well as  free festive papers . Make Christmas cards was offering:  2 embossing folder borders ,  13 stylish stamps ,  32 Christmas papers ,  12 découpage sheets ,  117 toppers & motifs and  73 festive greetings. Here you have some of the cards and tags I've made with the magazines' gifts All cards have been donated to hospitals 

One more way to combine soy wax and gel!

The followings are all two-layered candles with the bottom layer made of gel and the upper part made of soy wax . Why combining the two of them? Because gel is transparent and allows you to embed objects   and soy wax   has an incredible  scent   throw and a long burning time ! Few simple rules for embedding objects: ideally they should be non flammable (like glass animals, shells or stones)! ...but if you do not exaggerate with the amount, you also can potentially use cinnamon sticks, dried flowers etc... To be on the safe side: if you use flammable objects I'd anyway suggest you to pour the thinnest layer of gel as possible (just to cover the embeds) and avoid burning this layer. And remember: never ever leave lit candles unattended! Let yourself be inspired and give it a try! Gel embeddings: glitters (blue candle) or sea shells (peach candle). Soy wax: caramel-scented.   G el embeddings: cinnamon sticks G el embeddings: cinnamon sticks (left) or star