Grocery store soap challenge

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Hmm, I finally decided to not take part in this challenge, although it is fun and intriguing, yet in a more … well, minimalist way than elsewhere. It would have exceeded the soapmaking budget that I can justify towards myself. 😳

But I don't want to withhold the recipe I came up with (and skim that bonus points for usage of the mould contents). Since it is purely imaginative, I'm feeling bad posting it into the gallery thread, so it goes here instead.

Go, come with me for a short trip to the supermarket – the shopping list isn't long! Since today is a friendly and sunny spring day, we'll take the opportunity to have a bike ride.
After chaining the bicycles and grabbing our saddlebags, we enter the store, and head straight towards the oils. But wait! On the way, we already come by the Asia shelf and take a can of coconut milk (25%ppo = 4.5% coconut oil in the oil blend) with us. Later on, at the oils, we find out that our favourite locally sourced canola is sold out, so we take a bottle of cheap no-name refined canola oil (60%) along. A quick peek on the label: 25.5% poly-unsaturated fats – Phew, that'll be low enough in the final recipe, so that the SMF know-it-all's wouldn't complain about exceeding DOSsiness.

We amble into the confectionery and baking section, and take a cup of baking gianduja/nougat (20%ppo = 4.6% hazelnut oil + 2.2 cocoa butter) with us – wait, let's better take two! We had no breakfast today, and we need the cups as soap moulds anyway. Would IrishLass intervene with our evil plan to overshoot her favourite sugar addition level by a factor of nearly two? Whatever. We'll need it to add some nice brown colour to it anyway, and the cocoa and hazelnut oils are just luxurious; let alone the smell! Hope that some of it makes it over into the finished soap.
Finally, we make a detour to the romantic home decoration section, and pick up a bag of canola wax candles (29%).
Difficult to tell if the cashier is frowning under her face mask upon our weird selection of items, or if she's only tired and looking forward to weekend already. On the way home, we agree that the sunshine and the trees blossoming everywhere actually don't justify doing anything inside, and decide we should have a siesta with a hot beverage and a good book (or just watching the birds building nests and the bumblebees getting nectar-drunk) later on in the afternoon.

Anyway, we're here for some serious work. Once at home, let's see what we've brought with us:
grocery_store_challenge.jpg

Since @FragranceGuy didn't put restrictions on lye, we calculate our soap recipe with 5% KOH replacement, and dissolve 12.6%ppo NaOH and 1.1%ppo KOH in as little water as possible (3% lye discount). Thank you that you've opened the coconut milk can already! Actually, it'd be more useful to first get these annoying candles out of their casings, and the wicks out…
Some time later, we've managed to peel out the canola wax, weigh it, melt it up in a pot on the stovetop and step-wise add the canola oil – all while attempting to not eat up all of the gianduja early. Mind to switch on the oven already, at lowest level?

We chop up the gianduja addition, throw it into our soaping cup, and add just enough of the hot canola mix to stir it into a smooth, brown liquid. Then we add the coconut milk and the remaining canola, and stick-blend to emulsion. What, you insist on adding ROE? C'mon, that's against the rules of the challenge! We didn't source it in the supermarket! On the other hand … what they don't know won't hurt them … and in the end, it's us who have to deal with rancid soap or not, in a year coming.

Carefully dribbling the lye solution into the murky mayonnaise, everything combines with the help of our merciless mains-operated magic wand. Whoa, look at that colour! The alkaline makes the cocoa turn darker, and the dirty cappuccino colour quickly turns into something that doesn't look too different from the original gianduja. How convenient that we have the empty little PP cups at hand already, pedantically cleaned by the tongue of a true gourmet!

Little later, we notice onset of trace. We place the moulds on a baking sheet and fill them up with the soap batter, 125 g each, just like the gianduja, so easy to confuse! A spatula helps to scrape the last drips of paste out of the beaker. They try to fool us with false trace from the solidifying canola wax? Hehe, no chance – it's CPOP time!
Once in the oven, we eventually have time for some patience! Let's catch our breath, soak the tools in hot water, take off the gloves and glasses, and look up a delicious, infernally spicy Thai recipe to use up that half-empty can of coconut milk. Actually, for some inexplicable reason I'm not hungry at all … but we should use up that ginger in the fridge soon, we have fresh lemongrass, and, by the way, when did we have rice last time?
(Should I tell you about that one recipe that claims for 15%ppo rice purée?)

And so the endless story of soapmaking continues …
 
So I tried this today, what an experience!

To enhance that "first batch" feeling I decided to try something I've never done before and add honey to the soap.

The full set of ingredients, all sourced within my legally sanctioned travel area, are:

Beef tallow (butcher)
Coconut oil (convenience store)
Olive oil (likewise)
Honey (ditto)
Goats milk (same again)
Paprika (ibid)
Cinnamon and lemon EOs (pharmacy)
Distilled water (as previous)
And the lye was from the hardware store in the same village.
IMG_20210414_183314.jpg

Right at the beginning I got carried away and mixed some of the paprika-infused olive oil in with the rest... Most of it I held back, but the two parts are destined to be more similar than I intended.

I mixed the lye with distilled water 1:1, and the remaining liquid measured out in goat's milk.

While the lye was returning to room temperature, I warmed the honey and milk together until it looked completely homogeneous.

I cut the roof off the goats milk carton and stood it on end to try its performance as a column mould. Here it is wedged in a flour container for security.
IMG_20210414_184202.jpg

I was hoping to avoid a runaway trace so I decided to try tempering the milk and honey in the oils before adding the lye. I warmed those all gently together until the oils were decently melted, but the milk was not interested in mixing in.

IMG_20210414_183951.jpg

The lye by this point was fairly cool, so I stirred it in very gradually. The temperature just after stirring together was 54.4, as I stirred it with a spatula over the next 5 minutes, it rose to 61.4, and the mixture started giving off a biscuity or shortbready aroma...
IMG_20210414_185010.jpg

(At this point, 18:55, I reckoned I wouldn't be much longer, so told husband to go ahead and order pizza...)

From the peak of 61.4, the temperature started dropping again, and I took out the SB and gave it a couple of zaps. It looked like it was coming to emulsion, and to be honest I was getting a little bored of stirring so I put in the EO, in the expectation that the cinnamon would accelerate trace.

However, it remained stubbornly fluid; at about 19:10 it was looking like a thin caramel sauce, complete with crystallizing sugar. I convinced myself it was basically at emulsion and spilt off about a third to colour with the extra paprika oil.

IMG_20210414_190903.jpg

By 19:15 (after continuously stirring both parts and no change) I was starting to get concerned about the pizza timing and reintroduced the SB. After a bit more blending on high, I suddenly got a strong ammonia smell from the larger part, and it definitely moved to a light trace.

Encouraged, I repeated the same in the smaller jug, and was rewarded with a powerful stench around 19:25.

The sudden arrival of the pizza at this stage stopped me from trying to get it any thicker, so I poured it as evenly as I could into opposite corners of the carton and gave it a swirl with a long thin spatula.

IMG_20210414_193116.jpg

It then went to live in the sink while we ate our pizza, just in case of unexpected honey side-effects.

It's now 20:25 and it seems to have solidified somewhat, although I suspect if I stirred it I would discover a medium to thick trace... I can't get the camera to capture the swirl, but I can see a hint of it when I get the light just right. Temperature is about 27 degrees so I think it's safe to stop worrying about volcanoes (hopefully!)

Will let you all know tomorrow how it turns out!
 
@Tara_H OMG! I’m drooling to see how this batch turns out! Ingredients purchased within the challenge parameters ✅ Creative juices flowing ✅ Descriptive updates ✅ I couldn’t ask for more!!! 🤗 Yes, I selfishly created this challenge because I wanted to learn, but I’m THRILLED that fellow soap makers are having fun AND making great soap. If anyone wants to save me a half bar to sample, I promise I won’t cry. Well, maybe tears of joy 🤣 😉
 
Later on, at the oils, we find out that our favourite locally sourced canola is sold out, so we take a bottle of cheap no-name refined canola oil (60%) along. A quick peek on the label: 25.5% poly-unsaturated fats – Phew, that'll be low enough in the final recipe, so that the SMF know-it-all's wouldn't complain about exceeding DOSsiness.
I loved reading your whole post! Could you elaborate on the canola oil and tendancy to DOS? I've used some recently just because I'm out of all my other oils, and wanted to test some stuff, but I'm assuming I can't store these for too long.
 
We have grocery soap!

You can just about see the swirls in this pic:
IMG_20210415_141959.jpg

It took its time setting up and I got impatient, but I think maybe the goats milk carton wasn't entirely dry because there seem to be different levels of setting?
IMG_20210415_142334.jpg

Cut and laid out, fingerprints, cardboard shreds and all in true noob style 😁
IMG_20210415_144832.jpg

So far we have lather and no zap, so definitely soap! The lemon doesn't seem to have lasted at all, or at least it's not detectable over the cinnamon. I'll tidy them up a bit once they've hardened some more.
 
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I loved reading your whole post!
Thank you! Initially, I wanted to wrap up my cancelled idea in some shape that adds something to it besides bare numbers. It got a bit out of hand; writing up took about as long as making the actual soap (minus the clean-up work that by far wasn't as messy).

Could you elaborate on the canola oil and tendancy to DOS? I've used some recently just because I'm out of all my other oils, and wanted to test some stuff, but I'm assuming I can't store these for too long.
First, the anecdotal part: Canola is one of the most readily available oils here, so I used to use it as a base oil in quite some of my early recipes – and regretted this choice to various degrees. First, I never got bars that were reasonably hard and lasting, even with addition of palm, coconut and cocoa butter. More traumatically, I had my first and worst encounter with DOS in a high-canola soap. Just by the (awfully long) cure time it had become hard and lathered fine, it got brownish spots all over and smelled off.

I became a lot more cautious about poly-unsaturated fatty acids since then. There is some consensus floating around DIY soapmakers that above about 15% PUFAs, the DOS risk increases significantly. Without having scientifically challenged this number, I so far was spared with DOS since then (and, herewith, have become one of the know-it-all's from the SMF to tell others about such “limits” 🤔).

With respect to the content of linoleic acid, canola (along with rice bran, peanut. almond and a few other oils) lies somewhere in between the go-to base oils (olive, HO seed oils, hard oils, lard…) without quantity limit, and the high-linoleic “luxury” oils (sunflower, safflower, sesame, hemp, poppy, flaxseed…) that are usually added in small quantities at best, not only for rancidity reasons. In a robust recipe, with proper curing/storage, and, ideally, chemical precautions (ROE, chelators), canola and friends can make up for a major fraction of the oils. (My early recipes had neither.)
That's where the 60% number comes from: 60%×25.5%=15.3%, reasonably close to the “magical” 15% as long as no other ingredients adds linoleic acid. However, it is difficult to brute-force such a canola-rich recipe anywhere near agreeable hardness with natural ingredients alone, that's why I (would have) added the hydrogenated canola wax to up the hardness numbers.


Slightly off-topic: If the soaping bug bit me, and I had to make something canola-heavy, I'd opt for a lovely liquid soap (@FragranceGuy didn't exclude them). 70% canola (decent quality in a clear glass bottle), 20% coconut, 10% Styrian pumpkin seed oil (for a faux olive oil colour), and a ton of potassium citrate. Then, for zero-waste attitude (and the competition style scores), fill the LS back into the bottle in which the canola came.

ETA: Rancidity and DOS | Soapy Stuff
 
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Thank you! Initially, I wanted to wrap up my cancelled idea in some shape that adds something to it besides bare numbers. It got a bit out of hand; writing up took about as long as making the actual soap (minus the clean-up work that by far wasn't as messy).


First, the anecdotal part: Canola is one of the most readily available oils here, so I used to use it as a base oil in quite some of my early recipes – and regretted this choice to various degrees. First, I never got bars that were reasonably hard and lasting, even with addition of palm, coconut and cocoa butter. More traumatically, I had my first and worst encounter with DOS in a high-canola soap. Just by the (awfully long) cure time it had become hard and lathered fine, it got brownish spots all over and smelled off.

I became a lot more cautious about poly-unsaturated fatty acids since then. There is some consensus floating around DIY soapmakers that above about 15% PUFAs, the DOS risk increases significantly. Without having scientifically challenged this number, I so far was spared with DOS since then (and, herewith, have become one of the know-it-all's from the SMF to tell others about such “limits” 🤔).

With respect to the content of linoleic acid, canola (along with rice bran, peanut. almond and a few other oils) lies somewhere in between the go-to base oils (olive, HO seed oils, hard oils, lard…) without quantity limit, and the high-linoleic “luxury” oils (sunflower, safflower, sesame, hemp, poppy, flaxseed…) that are usually added in small quantities at best, not only for rancidity reasons. In a robust recipe, with proper curing/storage, and, ideally, chemical precautions (ROE, chelators), canola and friends can make up for a major fraction of the oils. (My early recipes had neither.)
That's where the 60% number comes from: 60%×25.5%=15.3%, reasonably close to the “magical” 15% as long as no other ingredients adds linoleic acid. However, it is difficult to brute-force such a canola-rich recipe anywhere near agreeable hardness with natural ingredients alone, that's why I (would have) added the hydrogenated canola wax to up the hardness numbers.


Slightly off-topic: If the soaping bug bit me, and I had to make something canola-heavy, I'd opt for a lovely liquid soap (@FragranceGuy didn't exclude them). 70% canola (decent quality in a clear glass bottle), 20% coconut, 10% Styrian pumpkin seed oil (for a faux olive oil colour), and a ton of potassium citrate. Then, for zero-waste attitude (and the competition style scores), fill the LS back into the bottle in which the canola came.
Thank you!! I was looking at my canola bottle, and trying to figure out where to find this number.. maybe I need to post a picture on a new thread.
 
Thank you!! I was looking at my canola bottle, and trying to figure out where to find this number.. maybe I need to post a picture on a new thread.
This thread was about sunflower oil, but the same applies to canola (just that the range of poly-unsaturated FAs isn't quite as high).
 
Thank you! Initially, I wanted to wrap up my cancelled idea in some shape that adds something to it besides bare numbers. It got a bit out of hand; writing up took about as long as making the actual soap (minus the clean-up work that by far wasn't as messy).


First, the anecdotal part: Canola is one of the most readily available oils here, so I used to use it as a base oil in quite some of my early recipes – and regretted this choice to various degrees. First, I never got bars that were reasonably hard and lasting, even with addition of palm, coconut and cocoa butter. More traumatically, I had my first and worst encounter with DOS in a high-canola soap. Just by the (awfully long) cure time it had become hard and lathered fine, it got brownish spots all over and smelled off.

I became a lot more cautious about poly-unsaturated fatty acids since then. There is some consensus floating around DIY soapmakers that above about 15% PUFAs, the DOS risk increases significantly. Without having scientifically challenged this number, I so far was spared with DOS since then (and, herewith, have become one of the know-it-all's from the SMF to tell others about such “limits” 🤔).

With respect to the content of linoleic acid, canola (along with rice bran, peanut. almond and a few other oils) lies somewhere in between the go-to base oils (olive, HO seed oils, hard oils, lard…) without quantity limit, and the high-linoleic “luxury” oils (sunflower, safflower, sesame, hemp, poppy, flaxseed…) that are usually added in small quantities at best, not only for rancidity reasons. In a robust recipe, with proper curing/storage, and, ideally, chemical precautions (ROE, chelators), canola and friends can make up for a major fraction of the oils. (My early recipes had neither.)
That's where the 60% number comes from: 60%×25.5%=15.3%, reasonably close to the “magical” 15% as long as no other ingredients adds linoleic acid. However, it is difficult to brute-force such a canola-rich recipe anywhere near agreeable hardness with natural ingredients alone, that's why I (would have) added the hydrogenated canola wax to up the hardness numbers.


Slightly off-topic: If the soaping bug bit me, and I had to make something canola-heavy, I'd opt for a lovely liquid soap (@FragranceGuy didn't exclude them). 70% canola (decent quality in a clear glass bottle), 20% coconut, 10% Styrian pumpkin seed oil (for a faux olive oil colour), and a ton of potassium citrate. Then, for zero-waste attitude (and the competition style scores), fill the LS back into the bottle in which the canola came.

ETA: Rancidity and DOS | Soapy Stuff

@ResolvableOwl Thank you for your detailed response to @Corsara ‘s question about canola oil. My fist batch of soap had a high linoleic percentage and I ALMOST had a problem with DOS early on, about a month into curing. I developed a few brownish liquid-y spots on my soap. I wiped them away and carved a small portion from my soap. So far it seems to be fine. I wasn’t aware of what roles fatty acids play in soap at the time. My linoleic was 29% for that batch. I have to say, the high linoleic soap is a better soap (to my tastes) compared to a high oleic/low linoleic soap I made later. So I wonder, how far can I push my linoleic percentage while maintaining a reasonable defense against DOS? That’s the question with which I’m moving forward. I’m fairly confident that less than 20% linoleic is probably workable. I’m beginning to wonder if linoleic fatty acids are the lovely soap factor that gets the short end because it’s difficult to predict. In regards to your observations about the hardness of your canola oil soaps, I did notice that my last grocery store batch was more soft after 24 hours in the mold than my previous soaps. This was the first time I used canola, might not be a coincidence..
 
We have grocery soap!

You can just about see the swirls in this pic:
View attachment 56125

It took its time setting up and I got impatient, but I think maybe the goats milk carton wasn't entirely dry because there seem to be different levels of setting?
View attachment 56126

Cut and laid out, fingerprints, cardboard shreds and all in true noob style 😁
View attachment 56127

So far we have lather and no zap, so definitely soap! The lemon doesn't seem to have lasted at all, or at least it's not detectable over the cinnamon. I'll tidy them up a bit once they've hardened some more.

That color is downright BEAUTIFUL!! Can you please share how you infused your oils and how long? Thanks 🙏
 
@ResolvableOwl Thank you for your detailed response to @Corsara ‘s question about canola oil. My fist batch of soap had a high linoleic percentage and I ALMOST had a problem with DOS early on, about a month into curing. I developed a few brownish liquid-y spots on my soap. I wiped them away and carved a small portion from my soap. So far it seems to be fine. I wasn’t aware of what roles fatty acids play in soap at the time. My linoleic was 29% for that batch. I have to say, the high linoleic soap is a better soap (to my tastes) compared to a high oleic/low linoleic soap I made later. So I wonder, how far can I push my linoleic percentage while maintaining a reasonable defense against DOS? That’s the question with which I’m moving forward. I’m fairly confident that less than 20% linoleic is probably workable. I’m beginning to wonder if linoleic fatty acids are the lovely soap factor that gets the short end because it’s difficult to predict. In regards to your observations about the hardness of your canola oil soaps, I did notice that my last grocery store batch was more soft after 24 hours in the mold than my previous soaps. This was the first time I used canola, might not be a coincidence..
Perhaps with a lower to Zero SF, and chelators/antioxidant additives you might manage DOS-free high Linoleic soaps.
 
That color is downright BEAUTIFUL!! Can you please share how you infused your oils and how long? Thanks 🙏
Finally finished work and can check my notes for you!

I made a batch of infused oil with 165g olive oil and 13.5g paprika. I left it to infuse by itself overnight, then I got impatient! I put it on the pancake maker (electric griddle) at about 40 degrees C and left it there from about 10 am until the evening. I strained it, tilting carefully to leave the sludge at the bottom as much as possible, and used 50g of the strained oil as part of the 450g of recipe base oils.

I'm not expecting it to stay that colour forever since natural colours notoriously fade, but I'm hoping that wherever it ends up will be appropriate for cinnamon.

Here are the soaps all prettied up! Still a little rustic, but only to a very acceptable level, I think.
IMG_20210416_115509.jpg
 
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Finally finished work and can check my notes for you!

I made a batch of infused oil with 165g olive oil and 13.5g paprika. I left it to infuse by itself overnight, then I got impatient! I put it on the pancake maker (electric griddle) at about 40 degrees C and left it there from about 10 am until the evening. I strained it, tilting carefully to leave the sludge at the bottom as much as possible, and used 50g of the strained oil as part of the 450g of recipe base oils.

I'm not expecting it to stay that colour forever since natural colours notoriously fade, but I'm hoping that wherever it ends up will be appropriate for cinnamon.

Here are the soaps all prettied up! Still a little rustic, but only to a very acceptable level, I think.
View attachment 56136
I would love to know how well the colour lasts! So pretty
 
infused oil with 165g olive oil and 13.5g paprika.
I strained it, tilting carefully to leave the sludge at the bottom as much as possible, and used 50g
I'm not expecting it to stay that colour forever since natural colours notoriously fade, but I'm hoping that wherever it ends up will be appropriate for cinnamon.
Well done! Good for you that you strained the paprika out before adding it to the batch. :thumbup: I didn't do that the last time I used it and it was scratchy!
While natural colors do tend to fade over time, a lot depends on the oils used. The tallow in your recipe may help to hold the color. :thumbup: At least, that's been my experience.
I'm a little concerned about using cinnamon for fragrance. It should be used with a light touch otherwise it can be VERY irritating. :eek:
 
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