Pumpkin Soap

Finished Soap

I added the first colored oils

Sorry this post is late.  My internet was down last night.  :(  I did manage to get some soap made yesterday.  This time I went with pumpkin soap.  Congratulations to Dolly of Dolly Creates for winning a bar on my post Picture Perfect.  I will ship it out as soon as it has cured.

Adding extra paprika oil and you can see I still
have bits of palm kernel oil still unmixed

I started by measuring and mixing my lye water.  I was hoping that this would help to give it the time to cool so that my soap would not trace too quickly.  Then I measured my oils and added 5 ounces of pumpkin puree.  This recipe uses olive, coconut, sunflower and palm kernel oils.  I mixed this all thoroughly with the stick blender to make sure that there were no lumps.  I also added paprika and annatto oil for color.  I was looking for a pumpkin color.  I actually add a little more paprika oil because I wasn't happy with the depth of color.

Color before the lye was added

I added the lye water to the oil and started stick blending.  It took forever to get this batch to come to trace.  I had barely heated the oils and the lye water container was cool to the touch.  I think that this had  a lot of impact on the speed of the trace.  I had to break up the power blending with stirring because my stick blender was getting too hot to touch.  It took about 10 minutes for me to reach trace between alternating blending and stirring.  I finally heated up a rice pad to place under the pot to start warming the mixture.  This assisted in reaching trace.

Trying to get trace

The first layer in the mold

 Once I finally reached trace I started to put the soap in the mold.  I used three layers of soap with cinnamon in between the layers for visual appeal.  I only did one layer of cinnamon in my mold of samples.  This was where it got a little tricky.  You have to be very careful when adding layers on top of a layer.  I started by trying to pour over a spatula.  I am afraid that this disturbed the cinnamon on the top of the first layer.  I gave the soap batter a few minutes to thicken up by putting the first layer in my sample mold and adding the cinnamon.  By this time the batter had thickened enough to add the second layer on top of the first in the sample mold.  After getting the sample mold finished, I went back to adding the layers in my main mold.  At this point the batter was thick enough to not distort the layers.  I added a second layer of soap.  Then I added a layer of cinnamon and another layer of soap.

My samples

 After getting the last of the soap in the mold, I had to give it a few minutes to thicken a little more so that I could texture the top.  After it got thick enough to hold the shape I wanted, I made two rounded loaf type tops.  After I got the top shaped to my satisfaction, I sprinkled it with cinnamon.

All in the mold ready to gel

I re-heated the rice bag and put it under the mold because I was afraid it would not gel and it did want it to gel.  Gelling intensifies color and I wanted the color to be as intense as possible.  It did end up heating the soap hot enough to crack the top of the soap, but it is not a problem because it cracked right along the area I am planning to cut down the middle to cut each slice into 2 bars.  After I cut the log down the middle I will be adding melt and pour (homemade of course) "icing" on top of the loaf.  I will have to wait to post pictures of the bars.





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