I have to say that for me there is a learning curve. My fist batch I did not reach "trace" but it did eventually set up and was beautifully creamy and can I tell you the stuff lasts forever! I did not use any fragrance in the first batch. For the Second batch however I went all out and added fragrance along with lavender buds I thought it would act as an exfoliate and It does, but the lavender buds turned brown in the soap ... Not the prettiest bar of soap in the world so I will not be giving these out as gift but will be using them for my own family.
This is the beginning part of the soap making proses getting the the lye to come down to temp and the oil to come up to temp
and finally my soap molds ... old cheese boxes and tea cups the tea cups have little piece of lufa in it I thought this was such a cleaver idea. As I had mentioned this was my third batch of soap, I used Patchouli as it is one of my favorite scents. I have it on the drying racks now and am so excited because it smells amazing. I am still experimenting with the whole thing and trying out different recipes for the process. One thing that I did differently with the second and third batches was to use a stick blender as opposed to a stand mixer and the stick blender brought it to trace right away.
for the first two batches of soap I used this recipe and for the third batch I used a recipe that used only lard as it was much cheaper. I think the next batch I do will have a combination of both lard and olive oil and I will use a cardboard soap mold as the soap was really hard to get out of the old cheese boxes.
well there you have it.... I'm now addicted to soap making.
