Teach Soap

You're welcome, Wendy. It's also great made with goats milk, half & half, or coconut milk in place of the water.

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Linda
I know the voices in my head aren't real, but they sure have some great ideas!

The colorant and the castor oil are not what make you have oil on top of your batch. As said, Your recipe is sound, even before I knew it was from the book I ran it through the lye calc. It really sounds like you are not getting the FO blended in well enough and/or you are not getting a good trace. Have you watched the videos on utube by the soap queen? If I remember correctly she shows you what a good trace looks like. That may help you. If you can lift your stick blender from the batter, swirls it over the top and have the lines stay on the top for a few seconds, you have good trace....there should be no separation of the oils if you stop blending and leave the batter sit for while. I am not great at describing, but this is all I can think of to describe how it should be.
Much luck and hang in there!

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Remember, it's not just that we weather the storm, but how we dance in the rain.

Tammy