Ok, so it's melt and pour and wasn't that difficult to do...but I'm still pretty darn proud! 
And considering that I have a 20 month old and another baby due in April, I'm a little leery about having lye in the house so I'll probably be sticking with m&p for quite some time.
I ordered a pound of shea m&p from Brambleberry, not realizing that a pound wasn't going to go very far ( ) so my experiments are limited to one bar at a time! lol
My first trial was 4oz melted in the microwave with a dash of Vanilla Vanilla fragrance added and nothing else. I didn't take a pic of that one because it's just white and kind of boring to look at. I discovered in the process of making that one that I really don't like that vanilla FO either...too flowery for me and not really vanilla-like at all.
The second bar was more interesting! I melted 4oz again and added about a tsp of refined shea butter to it. Once it was well melted I added Chocolate Espresso FO and added cocoa powder to get a nice chocolatey brown color. I kept stirring until it started to really thicken up, then strained it into the mold (a plastic food cup). As it set, some of the cocoa powder settled on the bottom and created a really nice effect! I really love the Chocolate Espresso FO as well...can't stop sniffing this one!
http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2049/233 ... 48.jpg?v=0
Hope that link works!
And considering that I have a 20 month old and another baby due in April, I'm a little leery about having lye in the house so I'll probably be sticking with m&p for quite some time.
I ordered a pound of shea m&p from Brambleberry, not realizing that a pound wasn't going to go very far (
) so my experiments are limited to one bar at a time! lolMy first trial was 4oz melted in the microwave with a dash of Vanilla Vanilla fragrance added and nothing else. I didn't take a pic of that one because it's just white and kind of boring to look at. I discovered in the process of making that one that I really don't like that vanilla FO either...too flowery for me and not really vanilla-like at all.
The second bar was more interesting! I melted 4oz again and added about a tsp of refined shea butter to it. Once it was well melted I added Chocolate Espresso FO and added cocoa powder to get a nice chocolatey brown color. I kept stirring until it started to really thicken up, then strained it into the mold (a plastic food cup). As it set, some of the cocoa powder settled on the bottom and created a really nice effect! I really love the Chocolate Espresso FO as well...can't stop sniffing this one!
http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2049/233 ... 48.jpg?v=0
Hope that link works!
I think he might be coming around!
