Is there any benefit to adding cocoa butter at trace?

[Hawksquill]

I was reviewing my document of soapmaking tips and tricks, where I have a bibliography of useful resources and then various copy and pasted quotes from articles that I found helpful. I came across this quote, but wasn't able to cross-reference it with a source or link:

"To use cocoa butter well in your recipes, save the melted cocoa butter until your soap is at the trace stage, and then add it to your soap."

I honestly haven't been doing this, and now I'm wondering if I'm missing something, or if this is playing into the myth that adding luxury ingredients at trace will somehow superfat only those ingredients, or preserve the lush qualities of these ingredients. I know from reading this forum that this isn't true, but I wasn't sure whether there was something about the texture of CB that might make adding it at trace helpful for some reason.

Is there any merit to this for CB in particular, or can I remove this from my notes?

 

[DeeAnna]

I'd delete that advice if they were my notes. If it's cold process soap, there's no real benefit to adding fats at trace. A lot of the lye is still active at that point, and it will saponify whatever fats it wants to saponify with.

Some people think the lye is mostly used up by the time soap reaches trace, and that's the rationale behind the "add superfat at trace" idea. If you try taking the temperature of soap in the mold, however, you'll find it will continue to increase in temperature for hours after it reaches trace. If the lye is mostly gone, what's causing that soap batter to warm up?

 

[lsg]

It would be better to it add it at the end if you were doing hot process and then you could add it after the cook.

 

[Hawksquill]

I'd delete that advice if they were my notes. If it's cold process soap, there's no real benefit to adding fats at trace. A lot of the lye is still active at that point, and it will saponify whatever fats it wants to saponify with.

Some people think the lye is mostly used up by the time soap reaches trace, and that's the rationale behind the "add superfat at trace" idea. If you try taking the temperature of soap in the mold, however, you'll find it will continue to increase in temperature for hours after it reaches trace. If the lye is mostly gone, what's causing that soap batter to warm up?

I suspected as much, but just wanted to check there wasn't something about CB or butters specifically I was missing - but another myth busted! Thanks