Teach Soap

So I'm dreaming again about a coconut milk batch. I'm figuring and squirming and pulling my hair just so.

My question is do I measure out the coconut milk before I freeze it or after I freeze it. Does freezing a liquid change the weight of the liquid? Oh these details, so important and worrisome!

Thanks for any guidance!

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~bytheSEAsoap~ Mella bythesea, bythesea, bythebeautiful sea

海の皂

Weigh out the coconut milk before you freeze it. The weight should not change after.

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Irena
Closed minds are like faulty parachutes; they refuse to open.

Do you have to freeze the coconut milk? I just found a recipe that says to add at trace, just room temp. Will I have trouble if I do it like that?

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Irena
Closed minds are like faulty parachutes; they refuse to open.

Thanks, the recipe says at trace, but I didn't know if coconut milk was like goat's milk and needed to be added frozen. I appreciate the info and will let you know how it goes. Mella, good luck with your coconut soap, too.

Maybe read through these blog posts before working with the Coconut Milk so you can learn from my over-heating mistakes =))

http://soap-queen.blogspot.com/2009/09/ ... lcano.html

http://soap-queen.blogspot.com/2009/10/ ... pdate.html

http://soap-queen.blogspot.com/2009/10/ ... batch.html

http://soap-queen.blogspot.com/2009/11/ ... ation.html

Have fun! I always just put the coconut milk in place of the water but that definitely can exacerbate the heat issues (the non-freezing, non-cooled milk) that my batches both had =)

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Happy Soaping!

Anne-Marie
blog: www.soap-queen.blogspot.com
supplies: www.brambleberry.com

I always just used it in place of water and mixed the lye in directly. 1/2 frozen coconut milk and 1/2 liquid. Never had a problem overheating or separating. It makes an awesome soap. A lot of people want goat's milk soap.....but that's only because they never tried coconut milk soap.

Thank you SoapQueen for the links, yes I read them all twice! Wow what a recovery. How did the loaf with the split top get back together? That looked like magic!

Thank you all for the encouragement, I'll just dither along for a day or two and then get it together in a whirl!

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~bytheSEAsoap~ Mella bythesea, bythesea, bythebeautiful sea

海の皂

Here is the thread that I started on Canned Coconut Milk. I did not freeze mine. I did what Soapbuddy said and dissolved my lye in min water and then added the cm at trace. It is hardening up nicely and I have already used it in the shower (after letting it set for a week). It is fabulous!
.

Good luck!

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Haven

I just finished my batch of coconut milk soap, do I even put something over the top of it? Or just leave it open to the air? It's in my laundry room which is about 70 degrees right now.

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Irena
Closed minds are like faulty parachutes; they refuse to open.

Oh gosh I had a grand time made a 2 LB batch of coconut milk soap. I hope I don't jinx it by telling you it is so pretty, I can hardly believe it!

So I did everything wrong but wrote it all down so I can do it again if it works. By this time tomorrow we'll see if it turned out ok.

I froze an ice cube tray of coconut milk (the 41% sat. fat can). I refrigerated the remainder in a zip lock sandwich bag (sheer streak of luck that for pouring when weighing!), weighed out the lye. Weighed the entire coconut milk ice cubes into my lye mixing bowl with enough of the chilled milk to make my liquid. I then very slowly added the lye to the milk and stirred gently. I had the bowl in a pan of ice water, but only a portion of the bowl touched the ice water as it was almost bigger than the pot with the ice water. It rather started looking thicker as I mixed. Set it aside while I measured the solid oils and liquids, set the fragrance and colors out. After the divided mix were colored and scented I molded in several test molds and refrigerated the entire batch. Hum should have kept one or two out to see how that went gelling, oh well next time.

Well we will see tomorrow!



Soapbuddy does coconut milk need to be in the mold more than 24 hours if you have refrigerated it directly after pouring?

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~bytheSEAsoap~ Mella bythesea, bythesea, bythebeautiful sea

海の皂

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Irena
Closed minds are like faulty parachutes; they refuse to open.

Ok, so I thought since the molds are small I could remove the soap from the refrigerator after 18 hours. They are currently coming to room temp in the kitchen! No cutting yet but a pic for you! Perhaps I will cut tomorrow, but the cut will not be dramatic as the soaps are pretty flat!

photobucket large, tiny and med were too small to see.



Edit to add that I saw some photos of Korean soap and that inspired mine here! Someday I want to do soap that looks like my avatar here!

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~bytheSEAsoap~ Mella bythesea, bythesea, bythebeautiful sea

海の皂

Those look lovely. I've never soaped with coconut milk. It sounds adventurous. You've obviously mastered a technique. Your colors, fragrance, etc. all must have cooperated. Nice soaps.