Cream soap from soap scraps

[amd]

My first run of cream soap is done. I did it at a 1:1 liquid soap to soap shred ratio. I did see DeeAnna's comment further up with her suggested ratio, which I will do along with some other ratios I found looking at other cream soap recipes. I'd like to compare a variety ratios to learn the difference the KOH soap will create. I will say that "all the colors blended together" from the soap shreds is some ugly stuff! I'll post pics of my first run when I get home - I thought I had taken pics, but I only have the paste, not the point of dilution that I have it at now.

I'm also still figuring out this dilution process... I struggle with the concept of "add water until it looks right" because I'm not really sure what "right" is. How thick should liquid soap be? I'm not expecting it to be gel-like as the stuff in the store, but I don't know how runny it should be either. How thick should cream soap be? Right now I have it at point it just looks like fluffed up bubbles.

ETA: I've read the thread provided for IL's soap, it's on the list for this week Thank you!

 

[Susie]

Did you make that with the diluted soap, or the paste?

 

[amd]

I used a diluted soap, so it really wasn't a true 1:1 ratio - thanks for reminding me of that! My process was: [critiques, advice, etc. are welcome as I'm just winging it here...]

• melt soap shreds with 15% water and a touch of clay (next round I'm leaving it out, I don't think it's necessary because I use clay in all of my CP soaps anyways)
• When mostly melted (just the occasional colored bit here and there), added equal weight [to soap shreds] of diluted liquid soap. I don't have my notes here, but I believe I wound up with .8:1 paste to water ratio
• Cook until back to paste form.
• Add melted stearic acid and glycerin. I can't remember the percentages I used off the top of my head. I used a light hand as I started with 5oz soap shreds by weight, and used .4 oz SA and .5 oz glycerine. It gets liquidy, and I was inclined to panic and toss the entire mess, but I let it cook for about 30 minutes and stirred often. (I don't really have a reason why, I just thought it should cook for a bit.)

It's a gloopy hot mess coming out of the pan, but once it cooled it was quite firm. I put a bit of it in a mason jar with an equal amount of water and it softens nicely. With stirring and breaking up the chunks, it is looking like fluffed up bubbles but has a solid feel to it. It lathers really nice and has a good skin feel, even if it smells weird. (I had fragranced the liquid soap paste, not really thinking about what I was going to use some of it for, and combined with the soap shred fragrance(s), it just smells weird.)

 

[Susie]

OK, so let me verify what you did:

5 oz NaOH soap shreds
0.75 oz (15%) water
Melt above two together, then add-
5 oz diluted KOH soap
Cook back to paste form, then add-
0.4 oz SA
0.5 oz glycerin
Then cook entire thing 30 minutes, then cool and add an equal weight of water.

 

[amd]

Susie - yes. Although I had a typo in the water, it should be 25% (1.25 oz) not 15%.

Not that it really matters, I think. I did this on the stove top because it was such a small batch so I thought the water would help prevent it from sticking to my stainless steel pots while melting. (Ha!) A larger batch I would do in the crockpot and probably skip the water addition. Just melt it straight up like a rebatch. (Or at least how I do my rebatch, which is just shred, melt, and remold, unless I screwed up an oil or known lye measurement, in which case I would add whatever to adjust the recipe correctly.) Sorry... I'm rambly today. I blame the food coma from the weekend.

 

[Susie]

Does anyone know if this would need to "rot" like cream soap from scratch?

Also, does anyone have any idea if you could melt the NaOH soap in the diluted liquid soap to save a step?

I am going to try the following to see how it turns out, to try to combine DeeAnna's percentage forumulation with amd's recipe/method above:

2 oz soap shreds (22% palmitic acid)(20% NaOH)
10 oz diluted IrishLass's GLS recipe soap(80% KOH)
Melt soap shreds in liquid soap until completely melted.
Add:
0.5 oz SA (melted)
0.6 oz glycerin

If anyone sees holes in my reasoning, please speak up! This is a whole new world for me, and your experience could save me lots of time and effort!

 

[lsg]

I started using mine right away.

 

[amd]

Here's my cream diluted at 1:1. It's still a bit chunky so I added 2 tsp water and I'll hit it with the stick blender tonight. (This is only about 2 Oz by volume, a small portion of what I made.)

Susie, let me/us know if melting the shreds and gls together work! That would be awesome to save a step. My only concern was how thick the shreds got after adding the KOH soap. Maybe not an issue for the ratio you're using. I'll keep that in mind tomorrow when I'm playing more. Tonight I'm giving the gls soap a whirl as I think I have a handle on that process.

Side note: I pulled out the cream soap I had bought from another soaper. It was horrible. Very little bubbles, a really dead lather, and a dry skin after feel. Definitely not the bubble bath in a jar that she promised me! This cream soap is over a year old though - does it not follow the same "better with age" as bar soap? (Totally random question, sorry...)

 

[DeeAnna]

Supposedly cream soap improves with age. It stands to reason this should happen -- being a gel/paste type of soap, it's going to develop a crystal structure of sorts as time goes on. People report there is a texture change with time and that supports the idea that a crystalline structure develops in this soap.

That said, my one try at cream soap left me with the feeling that the hoopla about this soap is mostly hype. The photos you see of cream soap with that appealing whipped cream texture are usually right after the soap has been whipped up. Problem is mine always firmed after whipping to a waxy cream-cheese texture no matter what I did. Again, this supports the development of a crystalline structure -- interesting to an engineer or scientist studying this product, but not so pleasant to the user, even if she is an engineer.

In use, the soap had a plastic-y texture, it was hard to mix with water, and the stearic acid "supercream" left an odd waxy feeling on my skin. I learned that many people use cream soap more as a base for products like scrubs, not for use directly. I tried making a sugar scrub with some of the cream soap and again I was less than impressed.

Dunno. I realize my opinion is based on only one try at making and using cream soap, but reading between the lines of what other people say, I gather I'm not alone in my reactions.

Shaving soap of the type discussed in Songwind's long thread "My shave soap is a success" is actually a type of cream soap, but people think about shave soap quite differently. People don't try to whip shave soap into a fluffy pile and expect it to stay that way -- "everyone knows" a shave soap like Songwind's is supposed to be a waxy puck or stiff paste. "Everyone also knows" a shave soap lather has to be created by aggressive whipping or hand lathering at the time of use. The expectations are so different (and more realistic, IMO) for shave soap vs. cream soap.

 

[amd]

Thanks, DeeAnna, for the input on the crystal structure of cream soap. Waxy cream cheese is exactly how I would describe the cream soap that I purchased. I may pull that jar out of the bin to play with a bit more, just from the perspective of observation. (I'm also an engineer ) I'm getting some ground pumice in on Friday, so I may try mixing a little with cream soap to try as a foot scrub, which is my ultimate goal for making cream soap anyways, ha! I did use a bit of my cream soap, lumpy as it was, on my face this morning. Not the most fantastic lather, but not terrible either.

It was just so disappointing to put some cream soap on the shower poofy and try to work up some bubbles. After about 5 minutes and making very little progress on washing, I gave up and grabbed a bar of my soap. I really don't understand why some people don't like bar soap! "It's too hard to use." Compared to what? ?? ugh. ranting.

 

[Susie]

I had to dilute some GLS paste to make this, but I used the 10 oz diluted GLS (0.75:1) to melt the NaOH shreds. Worked a charm. I did have to add 4 oz H2O to get it all worked together with the stick blender. Added the SA and glycerin, then realized I was late starting supper cooking, so I had to stop. Will resume today as soon as I get done with a couple of things.

ETA: Here is the consistency today. Still quite grainy, I think from unmelted SA, as it was quite smooth before I added it. I have it in the crock pot on high, so I will check it and update as soon as anything changes. Sorry for the shadows.

 

[Susie]

After heating for ~ 40 min in the crock pot on high, it was almost solid! I stirred and stirred, and finally added 1 oz H2O. Here is the latest pic, still a tad grainy, but it lathers like no one's business!

The actual color is not white, it is a pale blue/teal/green shade, as the bar soap I used was a confetti soap made with blue shreds, then mixed into a white (with white mica) base soap. Oh, the confetti was from a batch I made that got too much oil in it due to my first experience with micas. It was from January, I think. But the confetti soap is just now 7 weeks old, so that may have helped it melt faster.

 

[Susie]

And here is the (maybe semi) final product, whipped. Still warm, but no graininess left. Lather result first.

I have to say that this process is loads and loads easier than the rest of the cream soap recipes. Of course, I have never made, or even used cream soap before, so I have nothing to compare it to.

 

[lsg]

Looks great!

 

[amd]

Susie that looks awesome! Thanks for the feedback on melting shreds with the liquid soap - I knew there were probably short cuts that could be made. I'll be doing it that way from now on. I think this method appears to be a success! I'll be curious to see how it keeps. I am so looking forward to making foot scrubs for summer

Mine is still a lumpy weird mess because I didn't play with it last night. I had one of those days where I couldn't hang on to anything (seriously, I think I wore all the coffee I tried to drink along with 90% of my lunch and we won't discuss how many pens went flying across the office and parts pans were dropped...). So I thought I would have some soap therapy last night... and that went horribly wrong - spilled lye water, half a container of coconut milk, and knocked the filled mold onto the floor... I gave up. I didn't even shower last night for fear I might accidentally drown myself. Tonight I have a work dinner, so possibly Friday night or Saturday afternoon I will continue with this project.

 

[Susie]

I feel your pain! I was having one of those days, also! Everything I touched ended up on the floor! After I got done with the soap, I got down the blender to make some food for the corals, and found out that the top of the vent hood was filthy! So, of course it had to be cleaned. And I fixed a nice container of hot soapy water that I then knocked off and it splashed all over the kitchen floor. While cleaning, I knocked a glass bowl off the counter, and then had to clean up glass. I am having another day like that today, so I am doing NOTHING.

 

[DeeAnna]

Maybe it's the cream soap gremlins? :mrgreen:

 

[Susie]

Update

I opened the cream soap today to evaluate what it is doing, I now have a thick, creamy, but pourable texture. Quite different than the other day. It is much like a body wash. I do not have a pouf to test it with, however. It is quite bubbly and readily lathers even without one.

However, I thought about something this morning. If I use my Soap2Go recipe, rather than GLS, that has lard in it, and 5% SF, I wonder if I can skip the SA & glycerin step entirely. (Y'all know me, simplify, simplify, simplify.) Does anyone have any ideas?

ETA:

Just could not wait to find out, so here is round 2:

10 oz Soap2Go paste (lard, OO, CO, castor oil, SF 5%)
4 oz grated bar soap (same as above)
14 oz H2O

In the crock pot on high. I lost my notes, so I am not sure if I used glycerin in the LS paste or not. I am thinking not, but I am not sure. I may add glycerin later if I see it needs something.

 

[cmzaha]

I think cream soap from scratch is much easier than this.

 

[DeeAnna]

Stearic acid plays two roles in cream soap. The stearic going into the soap recipe of course makes stearic soap. The stearic added as the supercream doesn't become soap; it functions as a thickener and texture modifier, just like it does when used in a lotion.

I talked about this with Faith Gratz Oriold (Alainya B) awhile back and she said her trials showed stearic as soap made the texture fluffier and stearic as supercream made the texture thicker and more opaque. I also suspect a lot of stearic as supercream adds to the waxy skin feel that she and I have observed, although I defer to her much greater experience with cream soap. I'm really a newbie at it.

Faith also wrote:
"...I have done many experiments with low to no stearic acid up front and no to low stearic acid as a supercream and they all start out fine but eventually want to turn translucent and lose their opaqueness. I get streaks of translucent soap running through them or they easily separate if you add to much water to get a thinner consistency...."

(Note -- Remember that commercial stearic acid is about half stearic and half palmitic acid. Also both of these fatty acids are key players when talking about the crystallization of soap. So I think we have to look at both of these fatty acids to get the full picture.)

In thinking about Faith's observations and after looking at a good dozen cream soap recipes, I think the requirements for a successful cream soap and shave soap are very similar.

Cream soap recipes that seem to work reliably over the long run have 50% to 60% of combined palmitic and stearic acid in the soap recipe (not counting any added later as supercream). Ones that didn't perform as well over time had considerably less stearic-palmitic in the soap recipe.

The key here is "over time." Recipes with less stearic-palmitic might be fine at first, but don't keep the correct texture and consistency as time passes. That's what I'm wondering will happen with you guys' experiments with soap scraps. I suspect there may not be enough stearic-palmitic soap in your trial soaps, and I'd expect to see the texture become runnier with time.

So Susie, I'd definitely use your LS with lard in it -- keep the stearic-palmitic soap content as high as you can!