Tag: Cold process soap

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Almond Milk, Oat & Honey Bastille Soap

I was excited to receive my copy of Milk Soaps by Anne-Marie Faiola. I have all of her books, which I refer back to quite a lot, to come up with inspiration and soap ideas.

I love using milk in soap, but in the past I’ve only tried goat’s milk, and more recently, coconut milk. So I was happy to see a huge variety of milks in this book. It gave me some confidence to expand my milk soaping imagination!

To dip my toes into the book, I decided to try out one of the more simple recipes. It’s a Bastille soap, which means at least 80% olive oil. While this makes for a luxuriously moisturising bar, it has the trade off of being a softer soap that takes quite a bit longer to cure. So patience is key!

If you’ve never made cold process soap before, please stop now and watch these beginner soap making videos by Anne-Marie

Basics of Cold Process Soap Making

If you’re ready to go, here’s the recipe!

Almond Milk, Oat & Honey Soap

Ingredients

Oils
528g Pomace Olive Oil
99g Coconut Oil
33g Castor Oil

Lye Mixture
215g Almond Milk (frozen)
86g Caustic Soda (lye)
1Tbsp Sodium Lactate

Fragrance
33g Oatmeal, Milk & Honey Fragrance Oil

Colourants
2tsp Titanium Dioxide (dispersed in 1Tbsp of water)

Additives
50g Colloidal Oatmeal
1Tbsp Honey

Tools & Equipment

Wooden Loaf Mould
Mixing Jugs x3
Hanger Swirl Tool
Chopstick
Stick Blender
Spatulas

Instructions

  1. Add all the oils to one of the mixing jugs. Heat in the microwave until the coconut oil melts.
  2. In the second jug, weigh out the frozen almond milk.
  3. In the third jug, weigh out the caustic soda.
  4. Slowly add the caustic soda, one spoonful at a time, to the milk, stirring continuously until all the caustic soda has dissolved. This can take some time. Once the caustic soda has fully dissolved. Add the sodium lactate.
  5. When the oils have cooled to around 40C and the lye mixture is around 25C, gently pour the lye into the oils.
  6. Insert the stick blender and alternate pulsing and stirring until you reach emulsification.
  7. Add the colloidal oatmeal and honey and pulse until fully incorporated.
  8. Pour roughly one third of the mixture into a mixing jug and add the titanium dioxide and mix in well with the stick blender.
  9. Add the fragrance oil to the remaining two thirds of the mixture and stir in well.
  10. Pour the fragranced soap into the loaf mould, saving a little bit to add to the top of the soap at the end.
  11. Pour the white soap into the mould in lines up and down the length of the mould, alternating between pouring from higher up and closer to the mould. Save a little soap for the top.
  12. Insert the hanger swirl tool at the side of the mould and push to the bottom. Make three or four circles inside the soap while moving the tool across to the other side of the mould.
  13. Using the remaining soap, pour alternating lines of white and uncoloured soap along the length of the mould.
  14. Insert the chopstick about 1cm into the soap and swirl it from side to side to create a nice pattern on top.

Cutting and Curing

Usually I un-mould and cut my soaps within 48 hours, however because this is a bastille soap it will be very soft. I would recommend waiting at least 5-7 days before un-moulding and cutting.

Once cut, let the bars cure in a well ventilated area for at least 6-8 weeks. Although, I would recommend a minimum of 12 weeks for this bar since it’s going to be quite soft. The longer you leave it to cure, the longer it will last in the shower!

Notes

You can substitute the almond milk for any other milk you have on hand.

I used Manuka Honey, but if you don’t have access to Manuka, then any honey will be fine.

You can substitute the fragrance oil for an essential oil blend of your choice.

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Rebatching Soap Scraps

I’m sure this is a familiar sight for any cold process soap maker – the container (or boxes in my case) of soap shavings and off cuts which are left over when you cut and tidy your soaps.

All of our bathrooms at work have my soap off cuts for hand washing, and you’ll more likely than not, find lumps of squished together soap scraps in most of my family’s homes – we haven’t bought soap in a loooong time! But after you’ve been making soap for any length of time, you’ll come to realise it is virtually impossible for you to use all the scraps up! Every time I make a new batch of soap the pile grows. I haven’t weighed all my scraps, but at a guess I’d say I have roughly 5kg of off cuts at the moment!

 

A small fraction of my soap scraps!
A small fraction of my soap scraps!

I can’t stand the thought of wasting, so that’s where the re-batching method comes in. Sometimes this is called triple milled or French milled soap. Re-batching is the process of taking pre-made cold process soap and “melting” it down to create a new bar of soap. Keep in mind that re-batched soap tends to look pretty rustic so don’t plan on doing any fancy designs or swirls as it just won’t happen!

How to Rebatch Cold Process Soap

I picked out about 600 grams of light coloured scraps and grated them. You could do more or less depending on how many scraps you have, or how long you want to grate soap for! I’m lucky enough that I have an old food processor that I use solely for my soaping projects so I didn’t have to go through the nightmare of hand grating all the little scraps.

grated-soap-scraps

Once you’ve grated all your soap, put into your slow cooker, or double boiler. I’m using my slow cooker this time because I have lots of things to do today and don’t want to stand around monitoring the soap cooking. The beauty of the slow cooker is you can walk away and not have to worry about a pot burning dry. The trade-off is that it’s a slower method than using a double boiler. If you want to use a double boiler that’s totally fine. The method is the same, you just need to keep an eye on your soap and stir more often.

Once you have your grated soap in your cooker, add water. The amount of water depends on how old the soap scraps are. If you’re rebatching relatively fresh soap (less than two weeks old) you may only need a couple of tablespoons of water. However, many of my soaps are at least two years old, so I’m using half a cup of water. Don’t worry too much about over watering, it just means your soap might take a little longer to un-mould, but the quality will be the same.

Give the soap and water a quick stir, pop the lid on the crock pot and walk away. I came back about 30 minutes later and gave the mix a stir. After about 45 minutes, I added some extra soap that I had cut up into chunks. This isn’t necessary, but I wanted to add some interest to the soap so it wasn’t just a plain brown bar. After stirring the chunks through, I left the soap to melt again. All up I had the soap cooking for around one and a half hours.

The soap is ready to be spooned into the mould.
The soap is ready to be spooned into the mould.

You can see the consistency of the soap is very thick. The original soap that was grated has melted down, and the chunks that I added half way through are left pretty much in tact.

If you want to add fragrance, add it in right before you’re ready to mould. Stir in well. I used 20ml of Kumquat fragrance in this batch as there wasn’t much smell left in the soap scraps.

Spoon the soap into your mould. Make sure you tamp the mould down hard to get rid of air pockets. Depending on how much water you used, you will be able to un-mould the soap after about three hours. There’s no need to wait to use the soap, as all the scraps are old and fully cured a long time ago!

Rebatched-Soap-Bar

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Mica in Cold Process Soap – Part 2

If you haven’t read Part 1 of this post you can find it here

It’s been one week since I made the test bars of soap. It took that long just to be able to un-mould the bars in one piece. You can see from the photo below that the bars were still very soft and the edges smushed on a few of the bars. When using silicon moulds it’s a good idea to have a relatively hard recipe, unless you want to wait about 10 days before un-moulding!

So, the results…

Soap-1week

I’m very happy to see that none of the colours I tested have morphed at all. The colours are ‘what you see is what you get’. So when choosing one of our micas you don’t have to worry about the beautiful purple powder turning grey when it mixes with your soap.

A couple of observations I had were

  • The Blue Sky Mica and Ultramarine Blue look very similar. The mica has a little more depth than the UM Blue, but overall they are a pretty close match.
  • The Red Mauve Satin mica, in my opinion, doesn’t look mauve at all. More of a rusty brown colour. I’m seriously thinking of discontinuing this colour and trying to find a nicer mauve.
  • The Patina Gold looks like olive green, not a hint of gold in there!
  • The Chesnut and Luster Brown micas are virtually identical. The Luster is a touch deeper but it’s very hard to tell them apart. These are great micas for mineral make-up though!

So there it is. Keep in mind that none of these test bars had any fragrance added, so if you’re having trouble with discolouration it’s probably a fragrance issue. We try to note on all our fragrances whether they can cause discolouration so be sure to check the descriptions when purchasing your fragrance oils.

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Mica in Cold Process Soap – Part 1

As someone who has made cold process soap for several years now, I have certainly experienced my share of soap fails. Usually it was because I was unprepared or because I hadn’t looked up how a fragrance oil performs (‘cement’ soap in a bowl is NOT what I generally strive for!) Colours have also been a major sticking point for me in the past. I used to have a real problem getting a nice purple, it would always turn a washed out grey colour – ick! I’m still having issues getting a nice true red using mica, but that’s another topic all together!

These days I’m careful about what colours I use in my soaps, I tend to stick to my tried and true favourites. That way, when I plan on having a beautiful four colour swirl, it turns out as planned with nice distinct colours.

A few months ago we switched to a much better supplier for our micas. So far every mica I’ve tested has been stable in cold process soap, which means they don’t morph (change to an unexpected colour)!

I tested each of our new micas in a basic recipe containing Coconut, Palm, Canola and Pomace Olive Oil but didn’t add any fragrance in case of discolouration issues. I used a ratio of 1/2tsp of mica per 100 grams of soap. So for 1 kilo of soap the usage rate would be 5tsp of mica.

I premixed each mica in a teaspoon of canola oil so that any lumps of powder would be fully dispersed before adding to the soap mix.

Premixed-Micas

One thing to note about using micas as opposed to other colourants such as oxides, is they can speed up trace very slightly. It’s never been an issue as the acceleration is mild, but it is something to be aware of. I tested our Ultramarine Blue and Chromium Green Oxide at the same time as these micas and the oxides didn’t affect the soap mixture consistency at all, even when the mix was left sitting for a while before I poured it into the moulds. Once I added the mica to the soap the mixture went from a thin trace to a thin/medium trace after sitting for a couple of minutes.

Poured-Soap

Each of the colours are very vibrant after being poured and have stayed true with no colour morphing at all. I haven’t gelled these soaps, they were left to set uncovered on my work bench.

As a side note – I used half the amount of oxide as I did for the mica. Usually oxides produce a very concentrated colour so you don’t need as much for a bright colour. So for the Ultramarine Blue and Chromium Green soaps above I used 1/4tsp oxide per 100 grams.

Soap-24hours

After 24 hours you can see the colours are still stable. They are losing that shiny sparkly look as they dry, which is completely normal. You can only keep the sparkle from micas when using a clear melt and pour soap base, but as far as the actual colour goes, so far they’re all performing excellently!

I’ll leave these soaps to harden in the silicon moulds for another few days over the weekend. I used a very slow tracing soft recipe so I wouldn’t be rushed when making these test soaps. As a result I need to be patient before un-moulding them so they don’t break apart in the cavity!

I’ll write an update next week after the soaps have been un-moulded and have had a little more curing time.

Stay tuned…