a little newbie help...

[angbaby4974]

I've been doing HP crock pot method for a few days now. And I love it! However, I tried to do a honey oatmeal that, well let's just say it left a LOT to be desired.
Here's the recipe I used:

Kaleb's HP Oat-N-Honey Castile
(great for crock pot HP)

32 oz. olive oil (not pomace)
3 oz. castor oil
4.50 oz. lye (about 5% superfatting)
12 oz. water

Add your oils to the preheating crock pot. Go ahead and dissolve your lye in the water. After the lye is fully dissolved, go ahead and add it to the oils. Stick blend to thick trace. Turn the crock up on 'high' and cover with a lid.

Check on the soap about every 10 minutes and stir well. Recover with lid.

After the soap has gone through the separation stage, then has gone through the rising up and turning in on itself stage (and looks like a cross between veseline and mashed taters) go ahead and do the knife test: stick a clean dry butter knife into the soap... if the soap looks waxy, go ahead and do a tongue test... if it still zaps, add an additional 1 teaspoon more of olive oil, stir it well and let it cook for about another two minutes.

Next: add the following:
3 tablespoons honey

Stir the honey into the cooking soap. It should immediately start to change colors, and will ultimately turn dark. It should sizzle a bit. Go ahead and turn off the crock.

Next: add the following:

3 tablespoons oat flour, mixed with about 3 or 4 tablespoons cold water to get all the lumps out (use your fingers to feel-out all the lumps).

Stir-in the oat flour mixture VERY WELL. Now you can go ahead and mold-up the soap. This amount of soap will fill a quart milk carton and a pint (half quart) milk carton.

I did everything to the letter, however it was SUPER oily and the soap just didn't smell nice at all (think burnt oatmeal). I let it set for 24 hrs & most of the oil was gone. Still didn't smell good tho. So I ran it through the food processor, & back into the crock pot. All went well & it's in the mold now, the smell has changed a bit, now it just kinda smells like wet cardboard.
Question #1...What would make the soap come out oily?
Question #2...What's with the cardboard smell???

Any tips, hints, answers or suggestions will be greatly appreciated!

 

[Lindy]

If your soap comes out oily there are a couple of things you can do - let it sit and re-absorb the oils, wipe it down and let it sit ro continue curing - or rebatch like you did. I'm not sure why your soap would smell like "wet cardboard" but again let it sit & cure now. The scent will change as it cures.

HTH

 

[angbaby4974]

Thanks Lindy! Today, it smells like oatmeal. Yay! Not oily at all, either. I'll post some pics of my recent adventure in a bit, gotta get the kids off to school.