I got to soaping today.  I wanted to try and use up my tallow.  I don't think I'll purchase more tallow.  I'll probably just stick with vegetable fats and oils.  But I had some tallow left.  I still have a small amount left.  I have some lard left over in the fridge as well.  I'll have to weight those out and make a batch that uses those up.  I have a small amount of palm kernel oil as well.  I also wanted to use up rice bran oil.  I used about 2 lbs, but still have about 1lb left.  Rice Bran Oil is supposed to be a good alternative to Olive Oil.  But I personally didn't notice a huge difference so I'll just stick with OO.  I'm trying to narrow down the oils and butters that I have lying around.  I'm trying to simplify!

Anyway…

I wanted to make another soap cake.  But this time it won't be a round cake, more like a rectangular log cake.  So I poured 1 inch into 2 of my loaf molds.  Tomorrow I'll unmold them and “frost” them.  I mixed Orange Peel FO and Champagne FO.  So they will be Mimosa cakes.  I had a little extra today so I made a couple of cupcakes. 

I also used Love Spell FO to make another soap loaf.  I divided the batter into 6 and mixed them with 6 mica colors which I plopped into the mold a little at a time.  I also embedded white hearts and stars.  I'm really excited to see what this soap will look like when I cut it!    It should be really colorful and hopefully the embeds are positioned nicely.

I just got back from a trip to Hawaii, Maui and Kauai to be exact!  A little rainy, actually while we were in the pool one evening during a light rain, KA-BAM, freakishly heavy rain and lightening and thunder!!  But still a warm winter in the high 70s and 80s.  Very nice.  Not too many places were you can wear shorts and a tank at 8am in the winter morning. 

Anyway,  I purchased some handmade soaps while I was there.  WHY?  Why would I purchase handmade soap when I can make it myself?!?  Why not!  I like to try out others peoples' soaps.  Sometimes I'm attracted by the fragrance, the color, or the packaging. 

1. Indigenous Soap – purchased at Oceanology Whalers Museum in the Whalers Village Lahaina, Maui  [a small but really interesting and free museum about whaling in Hawaii]
http://indigenousoap.com/
Aina

I got it because I liked the packaging and it was the first soap that I saw that wasn't melt and pour and one that I hadn't seen in multiple touristy places.  Although now that I look at her website she's in multiple stores mostly in Oahu.

2. Surfing Goat Dairy – Maui up-country
http://www.surfinggoatdairy.com/
Lavender and Papaya

This is a great dairy.  You can watch them milk the goats.  They have some yummy goat cheese and there were so many cute goat kids running around in a pen. 

3. Island Soap and Candle Works
http://www.islandsoap.com/
Hawaiian Sea, Relaxation Bar, Mandarin Lemongrass, Orange Passion, Anise Poppy Seed

I wanted to go to their stores because they make the soap right there in the store.  Their racks look so cool with all of their soaps curing.  I watched them mixing up a batch of soap.  They had an electric hand drill mocked up over a pot to do the stirring  They seemed to be stirring their batch for a long time, long enough for the soap maker to go to the coffee shop next door and get some coffee.   Mine would have come to trace long before theirs.  But then again my batches are considerably smaller and they are probably doing room temp oils and lye water.  I usually have a hard time waiting for my oils and lye water to cool down to room temp.  Or maybe the combination of oils they use is really slow to trace. 

Soap meringues!  I saw someone do this on You Tube and thought it was so very cute, so I thought I'd do it too.  They are pretty much smaller versions of just the tops of soap cupcakes.

And here's some perspective:

These are pretty much guest soap size, but how cute of a guest soap!  It's like a dollop of whipped cream!

So, here's how the soap cake slices look 4 weeks later.  Yup, the cake has darkened.  The frosting has retained most of it's lavender color.  Yay!

Here's a comparison from the fresh soap to the 4 week old cured soap.  Fresh is on the left and now is on the right.

    (my lavender nails match!)

It has darkened quite a bit. Looks more like a chocolate cake rather than some kind of light mocha vanilla cake.  I wasn't sure how to package these slices.  They are huge soap bars,  I tried cellophane, but it didn't work, so i went and purchased clear bags and tied it with a ribbon.  If I had a lavender ribbon I would have used that, but light blue was the closest in color and size that I could come up with at the time.  I think it looks good.

I don't think I'll do this size of a soap cake again, unless it was a special request.  It's just too HUGE for me to do for myself.  If I do a cake a gain I'll just use my log mold and make a rectangular log-style soap the next time. 

I got inspired by a YouTube video where the person rebatched or handmilled their soap.  I thought I'd try again.  I shredded up a bunch of old soaps and used my slow cooker.  I shredded up 2 lb 4 oz of soap which was all at least a couple of months old.  I think throughout the cook I added 5/8 cup of water. 

I wonder if the slow cooker dries out the soap too much.  I think it was cooking for 3 hours before most of the chunks were melted.  As soon as I started to glop into the mold it was hardening up.  I even preheated the mold so that the soap wouldn't be hitting a cold mold.  But still I had to really glop and push into the mold.  This batch I kept to fruity smelling soaps and I added satsuma FO to it. 

I still have more soaps that I could rebatch, I have some more with bakery type scents that I could melt together.  Maybe I'll try using more water next time.  I just don't want to add too much water, then it will take longer to dry out.  Got to find that balance. 

So upon thinking about what might have gone wrong with the soap cake and what to change for next time I make a soap cake…

1. The soap cake patties popped out of the silicone mold and were smooth as glass.  Actually really pretty, but probably too slick for this purpose.  The surface was too slick for the frosting to stick well.
1a. Next time, rough up the surface: scratch it up with a fork or something.  Like in pottery, scoring the edges before sticking them together. 

2. Gelling, I didn't make any particular effort to gel the soap cake. 
2a.  Warm the oven up to do CPOP.  Gelling will allow the old soap patties to heat up and hopefully meld better to the new soap. 

3. The soap cake is really HUGE, well at least to me.  5lb of oils/butters or 7lbs total weight.  I had a hard time deciding on color and fragrance for such a large amount of soap.
3a. Maybe next time I'll just use a log mold that holds one or two pounds, cut the soap log down the center laterally to make two thinner rectangular patties and make, not a round cake, but a rectangular cake.  I could still frost it, but it would be a smaller cake and the slices would be rectangular/square rather than wedges which seems more of a challenge to use in the shower. 

So in the end I had put the cake in the oven mostly unsliced.  The next day I pulled it out and sliced it all up.  The layers were still separating, probably because the cake as a whole didn't heat up enough. 

I then put the cut up slices back into the oven at 170 for 2-3 hours again.  This time the layers seem to be better stuck.

I think that the cake layers will darken more.  But we shall see. 

These are really large slices! They are each over 6 oz.

OK, so I went to check on my Tunnel of Love soap with the MP soap embedded into CP soap. 

As expected, sweating on the MP embed.

I'm just going to continue to watch it, and see what happens.

Oh, my soap cake is still in the oven.  It's such a large soap that it's taking a while to get to gel phase.  It's been almost two hours.  Sigh…  I'm crossing my fingers.

As soon as I started to cut the slices smaller like into 1/16ths (approx 6.5 oz), the cake layers started to slide apart!!!!  Nooooooooooooooooooo………..  I'm shaking my fists towards the heavens!!! 

I didn't make any particular effort to make this soap cake go into gel phase.  I just frosted, then placed it into a room temp oven over night.  I'm guessing the cake did not go through gel phase and therefore the layers of cake and frosting did not quite adhere.   Nooooooooooooooooooooooo………….

So I kinda placed the slices back into the cake and heated my oven to 170 F and put it in.  I'm hoping I can force gel and get the layers to stick together.   pleasepleasepleasepleasepleasepleasepleaseplease

I'm hoping this will work.  Now I'm afraid that when the cake goes into gel it will goo out.  I want to keep the shape of the cake as well as the piping and frosting work I did.  Oh please, oh please, oh please, oh please work work work work!!

Ok, I cut into my soap cake. !!

Oh my friggen god, it's so cute!!  It's like when I made my first soap cupcakes.  I love it when something goes so right!

The inside “cake” will darken more.  Maybe to a chocolate brown, we'll see.  The lavender “frosting” should stay the same. 

Oh, I was wrong, this soap cake is 7 lbs.  With the water weight it all added up to 7 lbs.  I did use 5 lbs of oils/butters.  I think I'm going to slice the cake into 16 slices…