Saponification Sunday...Suberb !

So first off, thanks to all of you who encouraged me last week to try my cinnamon coffee cake soap again, you know the one that was all dry and crumbly? Yeah that one. So I did. But I did something very different this time, at least for me.

The first coffee bar. Dry and crumbling
but with potential

I took my time.

I have a bad habit of always trying to do five, six, seven things at a time. Like right now, I have a load of laundry washing, another drying, Red Wattle fat melting on the stove (on low heat obviuosly) and I'm listening to ClareFM from Ireland, my favorite radio program to listen to while blogging. And oh yeah, I AM BLOGGING.

Coffe soap, just unmolded. I could've spent
more time making the top prettier.

So when I make soap I tend to do the same kind of thing. I will have a couple pots of oils melting, and another in the crock pot while measuring and mixing lye'. I do soap when all alone...but still I need to sloooooooow down, do one batch at a time and enjoy what I am doing. Besides it's safer that way.

Just your average mountain of soap

So this week, I followed my recipe exacty after double checking it with the lye calculator and I worked on this ONE BATCH only.  My recipe:

Babasuu Oil            10 oz
Coconut Oil              5 oz
Olive oil (pomace) 10 oz
Sunflower Oil           5 oz
Coffee Butter            2 oz

Lye                           4.34 oz
Cold Coffee              12 oz

Titanium Dioxide       1/2 teaspoon
Clove EO                    1 oz
Cassia EO                   1 oz

Coffe grounds (used)    1/2 teaspoon

After combining my lye/coffee with my oils I brought it to light trace, then added my EO's. I followed some of your advice about not mixing the EO's too much since clove EO can cause the whole thing to accelerate (see there? I am educata-ble) Then I poured out approximately 1/3 of the soap and mixed in the TD with hand mixer. I then hand stirred in the coffee grounds into the bigger portion of soap and poured that into my high tech diaper wipe mold.

After 4 days the bar was hard but not
crumbly and the bottom layer darkened well.

I then poured the lighter colored soap portion remaining, on top. Taking another even higher tech device, the small kitchen whisk, I plunged in into the soap about 8 times.

Popped the whole 2 pound batch into my frig. Left it for 2 days. Unmolded and let it sit at room temp for 2 days and then cut by hand with long knife. I get 8 bars from each loaf, each weighing about 5.5 oz each. This second attempt came out so much better and smells fantastic, that is if you like cinnamon !

The white streaks are cused by my knife.
Perchance a professional wire
cutter would be good?

I sell my soap primarily in our little farm store for $4 each, cheaper than most homemade bars I've seen in other stores but it covers my costs plus a fair enough profit. I also sell a few at two local antique stores.

I have no plans to expand my soap business...much...this next year, our farm requires too much of my time to do that, but maybe one day I'll open an online store. You can however, order a bar by emailing me at opies99@gmail.com. a $6 flat shiping fee in the Continental US for 1-5 bars. They'll be ready to use February 20.

Nothing to do with soap, just a good husband
spending time with one of our wonderful GK's

In the meantime I keep reading other soapers blogs and watching those those gracious and hardworking enough to make VIDEOS and I keep learning and learning and learning because my own particular learning curve is indeed quite WIDE.