How should I change this recipe?

[toyojiro]

I made soap with

RBO 65%
Avocado butter 25%
CO 5%,
Caster oil 5%

5% discount
38% water (50 water/ 50breast milk at trace)

oil and lye were both 42-43C when mixed.

I got trace after 10 minutes of hand mixing, so I added breastmilk right away. 5 minutes later, it was really thick and I poured to the mold.

4h later, I saw oil layer and thought I did not mix well enough, so I mixed with chopsticks.

1 week later, unmolded but still soft.

another week passed by and I cut them. They were usable but looked ugly. so I decided to re-batch.

Was my ratio not so good? what would you recommend?



I made another batch with the same ratio and replaced cocoa butter instead of Avocado butter. It took me 30 minutes to get trace. this one looks fine.

 

[savonierre]

You need more hard oil in your recipe, you could up the CO to 20% and d/c the RBO to 45% or change the RBO for OO.

 

[Robert]

Yes; with rice bran, avocado, and castor making up 95% of the oils, your product could hardly help coming out soft without some major adjustment. There are things you might try to harden it with other than using more saturated fats, but I wouldn't guarantee them working to harden it or resulting in a satisfactory product if they do. For instance, you could add dextrine as a binding agent. As mentioned in another thread, you could rebatch with some magnesium to make a harder soap. Some use paraffin as a binder, but it takes such a large amount that you might as well just saponify with more saturated fats to begin with.

 

[sistrum]

Or you could make the same recipe again if you want using less liquid. Use twice as much liquid as lye. Mix your lye with an equal amount of water, or a bit more, be sure to measure correctly and make sure all of the lye is dissolved add this to your oils and add the other half of your liquid at very light trace. Like you did before just not so much liquid Your recipe looks nice it's just going to take awhile to harden, like a 100% olive oil soap made with full water.

 

[Robert]

No, I think it's not as simple as that. Olive oil has a lot of monounsaturate, but the oils toyojiro used are high in polyunsaturates. Pure olive oil soap will eventually harden; soap with all those polyunsaturates, I'm not so sure -- unless it "cures" like linseed! :twisted:

 

[sistrum]

I just figured that since my 100% rbo turned out fine with a 33% lye solution that hers should not have a problem. But I do gel all my soaps which does help them to harden faster.

 

[toyojiro]

thank you for all the input! I'm just afraid that I get trace right away again if I try the same recipe. so I thought I need to modify a bit.

Sent from my Nexus 4 using Soap Making mobile app

 

[DeeAnna]

Toyojiro's first recipe includes a total of 26% of the myristic, lauric, palmitic, and stearic fatty acids that create a firm/hard soap. That's pretty soft, but the soap should firm up eventually. As Sistrum said, using less water and gelling the soap will help with this problem, but patience and time an alternative solution.

The second recipe with cocoa butter has another 10% of the "hard/firm" fatty acids, so it makes sense that this soap would be much firmer in the mold.