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- Apr 18, 2017
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I have just been making a batch of soap for sale and most of the bars seem to have varying degrees of problems with a whitish bloom on the surface and some have whitish, slightly crumbly edges. The surface bloom seems to come off with a damp cloth and the crumbliness does not go more than a mm or so into the bar. Of course, while I was developing the recipe it didn't happen at all. Now I have it certified, it happened the first two times on just one batch of bars, this time it has happened on nearly all of them. Annoyingly they look perfect when first unmoulded, it seems to develop over about two days following unmoulding.
This is the recipe:
300g (50%) olive oil (ordinary not pomace or virgin)
210g (35%) coconut oil
30g (5%) shea butter
30g (5%) cocoa butter
30g (5%) castor oil
Sugar 6g
Sodium Hydroxide 86g
Water 172g
I use an 8 cell silicone mould. I do not gel. I melt the hard oils separately then add to the room temperature soft oils before mixing with lye that I have cooled down. Probably mix at about 100 degrees f plus oil temperature and less that 125 degree f lye temperature. I don't usually bring the temperatures right level. I then pour and refrigerate overnight to avoid partial gel.
Any ideas what's going wrong? Ideas I had - melting the hard oils individually, starting with cocoa butter, then shea then coconut?
Warming the soft oils so there is less of a shock temperature drop when adding the hot hard oils?
Either not refrigerating or removing from the fridge after say, half an hour?
Looking at chocolate making though, the temperatures for tempering and mixing chocolate seem quite low so I don't see why that's the problem. And how would I avoid partial gel which I don't want either?
Any thoughts gratefully received. Apart from that the recipe works well producing a hard, quite lathery, long lasting bar of soap given my limitations of a palm free, veggie soap, but I need to overcome this cosmetic cocoa butter issue.
Thanks.
This is the recipe:
300g (50%) olive oil (ordinary not pomace or virgin)
210g (35%) coconut oil
30g (5%) shea butter
30g (5%) cocoa butter
30g (5%) castor oil
Sugar 6g
Sodium Hydroxide 86g
Water 172g
I use an 8 cell silicone mould. I do not gel. I melt the hard oils separately then add to the room temperature soft oils before mixing with lye that I have cooled down. Probably mix at about 100 degrees f plus oil temperature and less that 125 degree f lye temperature. I don't usually bring the temperatures right level. I then pour and refrigerate overnight to avoid partial gel.
Any ideas what's going wrong? Ideas I had - melting the hard oils individually, starting with cocoa butter, then shea then coconut?
Warming the soft oils so there is less of a shock temperature drop when adding the hot hard oils?
Either not refrigerating or removing from the fridge after say, half an hour?
Looking at chocolate making though, the temperatures for tempering and mixing chocolate seem quite low so I don't see why that's the problem. And how would I avoid partial gel which I don't want either?
Any thoughts gratefully received. Apart from that the recipe works well producing a hard, quite lathery, long lasting bar of soap given my limitations of a palm free, veggie soap, but I need to overcome this cosmetic cocoa butter issue.
Thanks.