Rebatching

I got inspired by a YouTube video where the person rebatched or handmilled their soap.  I thought I'd try again.  I shredded up a bunch of old soaps and used my slow cooker.  I shredded up 2 lb 4 oz of soap which was all at least a couple of months old.  I think throughout the cook I added 5/8 cup of water. 

I wonder if the slow cooker dries out the soap too much.  I think it was cooking for 3 hours before most of the chunks were melted.  As soon as I started to glop into the mold it was hardening up.  I even preheated the mold so that the soap wouldn't be hitting a cold mold.  But still I had to really glop and push into the mold.  This batch I kept to fruity smelling soaps and I added satsuma FO to it. 

I still have more soaps that I could rebatch, I have some more with bakery type scents that I could melt together.  Maybe I'll try using more water next time.  I just don't want to add too much water, then it will take longer to dry out.  Got to find that balance. 

Pondering on the soap cake...

So upon thinking about what might have gone wrong with the soap cake and what to change for next time I make a soap cake...

1. The soap cake patties popped out of the silicone mold and were smooth as glass.  Actually really pretty, but probably too slick for this purpose.  The surface was too slick for the frosting to stick well.
1a. Next time, rough up the surface: scratch it up with a fork or something.  Like in pottery, scoring the edges before sticking them together. 

2. Gelling, I didn't make any particular effort to gel the soap cake. 
2a.  Warm the oven up to do CPOP.  Gelling will allow the old soap patties to heat up and hopefully meld better to the new soap. 

3. The soap cake is really HUGE, well at least to me.  5lb of oils/butters or 7lbs total weight.  I had a hard time deciding on color and fragrance for such a large amount of soap.
3a. Maybe next time I'll just use a log mold that holds one or two pounds, cut the soap log down the center laterally to make two thinner rectangular patties and make, not a round cake, but a rectangular cake.  I could still frost it, but it would be a smaller cake and the slices would be rectangular/square rather than wedges which seems more of a challenge to use in the shower. 

Soap cake slices

So in the end I had put the cake in the oven mostly unsliced.  The next day I pulled it out and sliced it all up.  The layers were still separating, probably because the cake as a whole didn't heat up enough. 

I then put the cut up slices back into the oven at 170 for 2-3 hours again.  This time the layers seem to be better stuck.

I think that the cake layers will darken more.  But we shall see. 




These are really large slices! They are each over 6 oz.

Sweating MP soap

OK, so I went to check on my Tunnel of Love soap with the MP soap embedded into CP soap. 

As expected, sweating on the MP embed.


I'm just going to continue to watch it, and see what happens.

Oh, my soap cake is still in the oven.  It's such a large soap that it's taking a while to get to gel phase.  It's been almost two hours.  Sigh...  I'm crossing my fingers.

Nooooooooooooooo.........

As soon as I started to cut the slices smaller like into 1/16ths (approx 6.5 oz), the cake layers started to slide apart!!!!  Nooooooooooooooooooo...........  I'm shaking my fists towards the heavens!!! 

I didn't make any particular effort to make this soap cake go into gel phase.  I just frosted, then placed it into a room temp oven over night.  I'm guessing the cake did not go through gel phase and therefore the layers of cake and frosting did not quite adhere.   Nooooooooooooooooooooooo.............

So I kinda placed the slices back into the cake and heated my oven to 170 F and put it in.  I'm hoping I can force gel and get the layers to stick together.   pleasepleasepleasepleasepleasepleasepleaseplease

I'm hoping this will work.  Now I'm afraid that when the cake goes into gel it will goo out.  I want to keep the shape of the cake as well as the piping and frosting work I did.  Oh please, oh please, oh please, oh please work work work work!!

Holy smiholy! I love my soap cake!!

Ok, I cut into my soap cake!!

Oh my friggen god, it's so cute!!  It's like when I made my first soap cupcakes.  I love it when something goes so right!



The inside "cake" will darken more.  Maybe to a chocolate brown, we'll see.  The lavender "frosting" should stay the same. 

Oh, I was wrong, this soap cake is 7 lbs.  With the water weight it all added up to 7 lbs.  I did use 5 lbs of oils/butters.  I think I'm going to slice the cake into 16 slices... 

Tunnel of Love Soap and Soap Cake!

So this past weekend I did two experiments. 
1. Embedding MP soap into a CP loaf. 
2. Making a full soap cake

1. I made a heart shaped soap tube using clear MP soap.  Then I embedded it into my CP soap loaf.  I used Falling in Love FO.  I mixed the base batter with TD and then pulled off some to color with raspberry pop mica to do a swirl.  The swirls weren't quite what I wanted, but it's OK.



For the most part it looks like it was a good marriage.  The clear MP wasn't as clear as I was hoping it would turn out.  The edges of the heart got a little fuzzy so some of it melted in the heat produced by the saponification process that the CP soap went through.  I think if the soap slices were thinner (these were 1inch thick cuts) then the clarity of the MP soap would be better.   So now the test is how the MP soap will fare as the CP soap cures.  The soap will cure in the garage and it's been rainy and therefore the air has a high moisture content.  Usually MP soap has to be wrapped up right away to prevent "sweating" as the humectant qualities of the MP soap pulls moisture from the air.  But the CP soap has to remain unwrapped during it's curing process so...  Also the CP soap will shrink as it's moisture content evaporates so what will happen to the MP soap inside?

2. I made a full soap cake!  Yesterday I used two 9 inch silicone cake pans and made two soap patties, or the "cake" rounds.


I mixed up a bunch of fragrances: Sparkling Grapefruit, Vanilla Pear, Strawberry Jam, White Grape Juice.  The vanilla in the Vanilla Pear and Strawberry Jam will make these cake patties turn much more brown.  I think sort of a chocolate color.  I did color some of the batter with TD to produce this swirly marbley effect.  Really pretty actually.  Hopefully, they'll look just as nice or better when the cake is cut into slices.



Here's perspective on the soap patties against my hand.  That's what the top of the cake patties look like, not as pretty as the bottom that was in the pan.

Today, I layered the cakes put "frosting" in between and frosted the outside.  I used sparkling grapefruit and summer melon spritzer as fragrance and used grape pop mica for color.  (I love TKB Trading's Pop mica collection!) I did leave a bit of the soap uncolored so I could pipe on an accent.  This whole cake is 5 pounds of soap!



I sprinkled some glitter on top as well.  I think it turned out fabulous, at least on the outside.  So cute!!

I'll cut this soap either tomorrow or the next day.  I don't want to wait too long or it will be difficult to cut, and I think it's going to be challenging enough to cut into cake slice wedges.

I hope this turns out well.  It took me a long time to decide on fragrance and color for this cake.  I really didn't want to make any errors or wrong choices.  Otherwise I'm going to be stuck with 5 pounds of soap!

Teeth Soap

I forgot, I never did post photos of the teeth soap I made.  I got a mold of teeth.  They are supposed to be used to make ice shaped like teeth to put into your drink, but they work great for MP soap!  I fragranced with Spearmint EO.

They are pretty funny.  I sold a few pairs at the fair.  I think they were going to be gifts for their dentists.  In fact I gave some to a friend of mine who just opened his own dental practice recently.  Smile!!