Checked on the soap this morning.  The ones in the oven have all cooled down.  They seem pretty soft, I could press my finger into it if I put some pressure.  And they seem a bit oily.  This is interesting because the last time I made a bastile it was hard by the next day; so much so that I had to put a little weight into cutting the bars.  But then again last time I used light olive oil and a water lye mixture.  This time it was pomace olive oil and half and half milk/cream lye mixture.  Oh this time I also had to soap cool because of the cream/milk.  Last time I put in very warm lye water into warmed up oil.  I'll cut the bars when I get home this evening and hopefully the oil will absorb back into the bar during curing/drying.  These are bastile so I'm in for a LONG wait before they get really nice to use. 

I'm really curious to see how the confetti soap comes out.  My husband says it looks like vomit in the milk carton right now.  Yay.    I put more soap trimmings than olive oil in this soap, so it's full of confetti, not just a light smattering of bits in a white soap.  Also pomace olive oil comes out a little yellow in color so I may be wishing I whitened it up with some titanium dioxide.  Then again, maybe it will be just great looking!  The fragrance seems to be nice a nice mix of everything, at least it's not offensive to me.  I don't know if this will require as much curing/drying time as regular bastile because most of it is trimmings that have already gone through some curing.  Also the trimmings are not bastile so maybe it won't take as long. 

Oh, I pulled away some of the bubble wrap that I had put around the soap with honey and it looks pretty cool!

I just unmolded the 100% coconut oil salt bar it's still a little warm.  Love the Gingerfish fragrance.  The soap popped out of the mold super easy, very little left over in the mold.  Sometimes the corners get left behind in the mold.  The apple green pop mica I used to swirl came out a nice sea foam green.  As I was washing up I used a little of the trimmings and it bubbled up really nice.  Coconut oil is one of the few oils, once saponified, that can withstand high salt concentration and still create nice lather.  That's why high coconut oil percentage soaps do well as mariner soaps.  They will lather in salt water. 

I believe I will have to celo wrap or shrink wrap these soaps because of their high salt content.  The salt will draw moisture from the air and cause little beads of moisture to appear on the soap, like the melt and pour soaps.  It's not usually that humid around here but it's raining right now.  I think I'll keep them inside the house for now to cure/dry.  The central heating should keep the humidity down. 

I just finished up a soaping session.  This time I made

1. 100% coconut 20% superfat salt bar soap.  I made this just like I did my other 100% coconut oil soap, but I also added 75% of the oil weight of table salt.  I hear that the salt does great things… what I guess I'll find out next month.  It's not a scrub bar, I shouldn't feel any grit from the salt.  It's supposed to just make a nice smooth bar. 

I think the salt bar will be ready to unmold today.  I hear the salt
bars set up really quick and if you use a large mold you need to cut it
while it's still warm.  If you wait until it's cooled down cutting into
the loaf will cause it to crumble.  I put my salt bars into individual
silicone molds so I am avoiding the short window for cutting salt bars.
I also used Gingerfish fragrance oil.  Mmmmm… smells like ginger ale or Sprite.  Yummy, refreshing smell.

2. Basic bastile soap (90% pomace olive oil/10% castor oil) and I threw in a bunch of my trimmings from other soap batches.  So the color and fragrance comes from all of the colored trimmings and their fragrances.  I put this one in a 1/2 gallon milk carton.  I think I'll cut these into triangles.  I'm not sure what kind of fragrance is going to come out since it's a mix of a bunch of differently fragranced soap bits.  Hopefully it's going to be a nice mix…

3.  Basic bastile (90% OO/10% castor) made with half and half instead of water.  So a basic milk soap.  I've read that milk, whether it's cow or goat, adds a nice creaminess and gentle quality.  Since bastiles are already a nice mild soap, adding the half and half should make it even nicer.  I put half of the batch in the freezer to prevent gel and half in the oven to gel.  I am curious to see the difference.  Usually gelled milk soaps come out darker in color as the sugars in the milk carmelize.  Preventing gel should prevent too much carmelization, but it will take a little longer before I can unmold and the saponification process will take longer, like in the whipped soaps.

4. Basic bastile and half and half with some honey added.  Honey and cream soap. The addition of sugar, whether honey, white sugar, molasses, etc. adds more lather to a bar.  So I thought I'd add some honey.  I don't think the smell of the honey will survive the lye process, but I'll see.  I also used some bubble wrap to create a sort of honey come texture to the soaps.  I also put half of the batch into the oven and half into the freezer.  The addition of sugars also makes the batter really heat up.  If one isn't careful one could not only caramalize the sugars, but also burn the sugars and come out with a really dark brown, burnt sugar soap.

So today I cut up yesterdays soaps.  The unfragranced 25% and 50% lard soaps have no piggy or baconny smell; at least to me.  I really wish I had gotten a sample of the 70% lard soap before I mixed in the FO.  Too bad, but I don't think that one would have smelled any more porky than the 25% or 50% ones. 

I love cutting the soap logs.  There is something so satisfying about the feeling of cutting into the semi-hard/semi-soft logs, to see how the color swirling turned out, and to know that I made soap.  I really do think I like making soap more than I like using it.  I have only one body and I take only one shower a day, but I can make up a bunch of different batches of soap with different colors and fragrances.  It's so much fun.