Maple Pumpkin - Awesome

Finished Bars

My favorite part of fall for the last 10 years or more has been going to pick apples at an apple orchard in Michigan.  They make awesome doughnuts too.  My favorite is pumpkin with a maple glaze.  I decided to try to reproduce it in a soap.

 

With everything but maple syrup

I started by mixing up my oils and adding the pumpkin puree to the oils.  I have discovered that I really like to use un-melted oils.  I mix the oils with my stick blender to break them up this way the oils get broken up and the pumpkin gets thoroughly mixed with the oils.  I then add the lye water to  my oils which melts them.  I have found that it seems to work really well unless my lye water gets too cool.

After getting the lye water mixed in I realized that I had forgotten to discount the water from the pumpkin and the maple syrup.  Oh well, live and learn.  The soap did trace well though.

Adding maple syrup

After I got the soap to trace, I added the maple syrup to the mix.  After I mixed the syrup in and got the soap to the thickness I wanted I poured it into the pre-prepared mold.  After the soap was all set in the mold I mixed cappuccino mica with some glycerin for a glycerin swirl.  Unfortunately, I added a little too much glycerin and so it didn't absorb completely into the soap.  I did have to do a little cleanup afterwards.

I added a brown mica swirl since the
maple syrup won't show up color wise.

I didn't have to deal with any soda ash on my soap bars, but I did get some on my sample pieces.  I half expected to get some due to the extra water in this batch.  Soda ash is not a huge deal to fix though.  I will just have to scrape off the ash before I wrap them.  I did however get some partial gel on the bars.  Fortunately it only effected about 6 or 8 bars.

This soap smells very, very mildly.  There is literally only a hint of scent.







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