Sunday, January 23, 2011

Handmade Whipped Cream Soap

What a cool new thing - sort of! I've been trial & erroring this for a while, and have achieved some awesome success! This is basically just a hot process soap, but prepared with potassium hydroxide and sodium hydroxide. Using potassium hydroxide alone produces a liquid soap, using sodium hydroxide alone produces a solid soap. I used a basic soap recipe, but used pure stearic acid for 45% of my oils. I then separated the oils into two groups - my olive, shea and cocoa butter into one group (about 17% of my oils), and then the rest of them, as if I was making two different batches of soap. The little batch, I calculated with NaOH at 5% superfat, and the big batch with KOH at 0% superfat. Then, I combined the two recipes, the total was 36 ounces of oils. Instead of using the 14 ounces of water recommended by the soapcalc calculator, I used 40 ounces - the usual in most cream soap recipes is six times the weight of the lye(which would have been 42 oz), but I wanted it just a bit more solid, so it would be the consistency of the foaming body butter base that I have been using for whipped soaps. I prepared it just as I would have any crock pot hot process, adding 5 oz of glycerin to the oils, as cream soaps can be drying to the skin, and glycerin helps to counteract that. Then, I cooked it in the oven in a stainless pot at 250 degrees for 2 1/2 hours - the KOH needs a bit more heat and time to process. I stirred it up every half hour. At the end of that time, there was no zap to the tongue, but it was still a bit harsh on my hands, and it was quite solid - I've unmolded HP soaps that were just as solid! My plan was to "supercream" it with an ounce of glycerin and an ounce of melted stearic, but it was too solid, so I figured I might be able to adjust the pH later. I let it sit in the covered pot for three days, squishing it each day(some liquid separated out the first day), and it became more squishy each day, and mellowed so that at the end of three days, it was as mild as commercial soap - like ivory. Also, no more liquid separation the last day. To prepare what you see in the pic, I measured 10 ounces of the soap, and whipped it with a hand mixer, adding .5 ounces of jojoba oil, .5 ounces of apple cider vinegar (to further adjust the pH, and for a nice liquid), and .01 ounces of germaben plus preservative, a must for any product with this much water, and paraben free! Oh, and also, about 1/4 ounce of red apple fragrance. It is just awesome. I washed my face & hands with it, and it left everything soft and moisturized - very nice on the face, I'm super happy with that! The lather wasn't as bubbly as the detergent based Stephenson base, but was still quite bubbly and creamy. Now, my soap, let me show you it!

Saturday, January 08, 2011

Whipped Soaps!


whipped soap
Originally uploaded by Surrender Dorothy
I'm in the process of adding my whipped soaps to the shop, I really like them! While I have a big batch of cream soap "rotting" to perfection, I'll be using the Stephenson foam bath butter base for these - it's free of parabens and SLS, but is a very bubbly detergent based soap, not so awesome on the face, but still very nice. I've added some shea butter to one batch, and grapeseed oil to another, and that made it really nice, even on the face part of me, and it really takes a fragrance well. Nommy.