OK so I tried to make a test batch of soap. I designed the recipe to smell and look like a Blood Orange. I wont know how it turns out till I unmold it tomorrow. But to celebrate the first batch I tool a few photos.
1. First I made lye. Because lye is so dangerous I have not taken any photos.
2. I measured out all my ingredients and melt them in a large crock pot. In the photo to the lest you see coconut oil melting down. Coconut oil is used in soap to help control oil skin and make great lather. If a bar of soap is made of pure coconut oil and nothing else then it will lather even in sea water, but it will severely dry out your skin.
3. After all the oils are mixed and heated I slowly pour in the lye. Again due to safety I have no photo of this step.
1. First I made lye. Because lye is so dangerous I have not taken any photos.
2. I measured out all my ingredients and melt them in a large crock pot. In the photo to the lest you see coconut oil melting down. Coconut oil is used in soap to help control oil skin and make great lather. If a bar of soap is made of pure coconut oil and nothing else then it will lather even in sea water, but it will severely dry out your skin.3. After all the oils are mixed and heated I slowly pour in the lye. Again due to safety I have no photo of this step.
4. Next I use a hand blender to mix the lye and oils to light trace. It took me very little time due to the heat. Plus since it was my first batch I over did the blending. After the fact I discovered that the term light trace is when the soap just verily holds the shape of the bottom of the stick mixer when lifter away from the soap. I noticed I over did it when the spatula left patterns in the soap as I scraped the sides and bottoms.
5. Next I heated the soap, or better thought off as cooked it through a sold phase and back into a soft scope-able stage. After that I added FO of blood orange. Not a lot since the stuff was expensive and this was a test batch. Then I divided half the mixture into the mold box and colored the other half blood orange red. Scoping the last on top I used wax paper to press flat.
6. After a night of cooling in the mold, I removed the wax paper and cut small bars to test out. To be safe of the curing stage I let it sit on a shelf for a two week period. Just to be safe that the lye cured out and the bar harden just a little more.
