Teach Soap

Hi, all. I made my own version of Anne-Marie's pumpkin soap yesterday. (Here's her recipe: http://www.soapqueen.com/bath-and-body- ... ss-soap-2/). I wanted to use one of my own recipes instead of the one in the tutorial, so I adapted it to mine. Looking at AM's recipe, it looks like she's using approximately 1 ounce of pumpkin puree per pound of oils. I made a batch with two pounds of oils, so I used 2 ounces of canned pumpkin puree, which I added after achieving a very light trace.

I forgot to discount 2 ounces of water from my recipe to make up for the 2 ounces of pumpkin puree, though. I realized my mistake about the time I started thinking, "Man, this is taking a long time to trace!"

Here's what my recipe ended up looking like when all was said and done:

Olive oil - 436g (15.36 oz.)
Coconut oil - 264g (9.28 oz.)
Palm oil - 155g (5.44 oz.)
Shea butter - 55g (1.92 oz.)
Canned pumpkin puree - 56g (2 oz.)
Distilled water - 345g (12.16 oz.)
Sodium hydroxide - 126g (4.462 oz.)
Super fat 7%

I'm hoping that the 2 extra ounces of liquid won't be a huge deal. The soap did fully gel and today it is firm but soft, if you know what I mean. I will probably leave it in the mold for a couple of days before trying to unmold.

Other than the trace being slower and the soap maybe having a longer cure time, is the extra water anything to worry about?

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Hey, I made pumpkin soap yesterday as well! I also did not discount my water, but did so on purpose. I used arabian spice to scent half of the batch and sometimes with spice scent you need the extra liquids. Now I unmolded my soaps this morning and they were very firm after 17 hours in the mold. I did individual molds this time which I think helps the initial drying time. (I will post a photo today). So don't worry, eventually it will all work out. Were you making these as a halloween or thanksgiving or just an autumn soap?

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Susie
Sometimes A Mistake is so much fun, You just have to do it again!

Extra 2 ozs. for that size batch should be fine. It might start out soft, so put that batch away for a while.

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

Thanks for putting my mind at ease, Bubbles and soapbuddy! I was hoping it wouldn't be too much of a problem since I know you can increase your water to slow trace if you're doing swirls or working with a finicky fragrance or something like that. I've never used fruit puree in a soap before, though, and I guess I worried that the extra water might somehow have some sort of negative effect on it.

The soap is pretty soft, so I was planning to leave it alone for a couple of days and then check on it. The soaps turned out pretty, and I'll post some pics as soon as they feel up to a photo shoot!

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- Jenny -
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- Jenny -
My soapy blog:
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Irena
Closed minds are like faulty parachutes; they refuse to open.

[quoteI'll post some pics as soon as they feel up to a photo shoot!
][/quote]

I hope those soaps of yours cooperate real soon! Maybe you could bribe them ... higher superfat, a fancy soapdish, a pretty washcloth ????

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Susie
Sometimes A Mistake is so much fun, You just have to do it again!

Thanks, soapbuddy. I will leave them for as long as I can - I hope they'll be ready to come out by the time I need the mold again!

Bubbles, maybe I need to leave a nice present for the soap fairies - I wonder if they like pumpkin soap?

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- Jenny -
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I never water discount either for pumpkin because of the FO, and pumpkin spice I add, this recipe always get hot and needs the water. My pretty orange and brown turned all dark brown with the new pumpkin FO from BB, smells nice, but now I know next time to only fragrance half the bath for color contrast.

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Four Seasons Fine Handcrafted Soaps
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Thanks, Selena. Sounds like maybe it was a good thing I forgot to discount the water since pumpkin can cause the batch to heat up, and spice FOs can cause the trace to accelerate. I did have a tiny bit of a problem when I added the FO - I almost always add my FO to the cooled oils before adding my lye solution, but this time I added it after light trace because I wanted to separate out some soap for white swirls (the FO discolors brown). When I added the FO to the main portion of the batch, it acted like it wanted to rice on me a bit. I managed to stickblend it to a smoother consistency, but it was still more lumpy than I'm used to. It still looks okay, but just not as smooth as I would like. Wasn't sure if it was the FO or the puree that was causing the curdled appearance, but I'm thinking it must be the FO since the unscented white swirling soap had puree in it, too, and it was nice and smooth.

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- Jenny -
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