Dawni
Well-Known Member
While doing research I found some soap blogs that say Alkanet (the more popular of the two) and Ratanjot are the same thing. I've also found sites which state that they are two different plants, and so does Jo Haslauer in this article here. They do apparently give similar results so I guess that's why some interchange them.
I was very happy to have gotten both ratanjot roots and powder from a little shop in Karachi, Pakistan. They use this to sometimes color food there btw.
So in my quest to further expand my knowledge of natural colorants in HP, I decided to use them different ways. There isn't much written info on ratanjot even in CP, and there's even less for HP. I hope someone in the future finds this helpful.
I initially tried soaking some roots, which look n feel more like dried leaves than hard roots, in my lye water. I'll show you guys the results of that later.
Then I infused some roots in coconut oil, which here, remains liquid where my soapy stuff is, in the kitchen. After a couple of weeks it wasn't becoming as dark as I wanted so I threw in some powder.
Here's what it the oils look like before I added the lye.
The infused coconut oil here is 18% of total oils. Maybe next time I'll infuse some rice bran instead, which I use more of in general, in any recipe. I planned on trying a lip balm with this ratanjot infusion, hence the usage of coconut oil.
Here's where the magic starts. As soon as I dumped in the lye, and started mixing with my spatula, my wine-like oils unfortunately did not turn into water lols but I did get a cool aurora borealis effect inside the pot. I doubt I'd get to see the real thing anytime soon, so I'm settling for this as the 5252nd best thing haha
Incidentally, I got trace with just my spatula in about 6mins, so I had that time with my magic batter. Trace and midway into the cook looked the same. Instead of purplish though, a mix of grey, blue and green. Unfortunately, the pictures don't do the color justice at all. It was loads more vibrant in the pot.
I was loving it. Then I panicked and wasn't able to take pics lol
I almost always add my coconut milk (reconstituted in part of the water required) at the end of my cook, and when I did my beautiful, magical batter turned into neon-ish green of all things, then into a really bleh brown, similar to instant coffee with milk lol
I realize it was the sugars in the milk but in previous soaps it only made the batter darker in shade, not change colors completely, so this came as a shock. Good thing when I unmolded I saw it again magically turned into something that veeeeeery slightly resembles purple, albeit a more grey one.
And here's a side by side shot with the soap that had the ratanjot mixed in the lye water.
This soap is about two months old though, so it's lighter than it initially was but not by much, and the color has stayed the same. In reality, which my camera doesn't capture, these two batches look very different.
I imagine alkanet will behave similarly but I haven't tried as I've not found out where I can get some. On another note, I've tried this infused oil thrice now, as a colorant in CP for swirls and all times it turned blue, the color I imagine indigo should be (but isn't in my case lol, but that's for another post).
Thanks for reading!
I was very happy to have gotten both ratanjot roots and powder from a little shop in Karachi, Pakistan. They use this to sometimes color food there btw.
So in my quest to further expand my knowledge of natural colorants in HP, I decided to use them different ways. There isn't much written info on ratanjot even in CP, and there's even less for HP. I hope someone in the future finds this helpful.
I initially tried soaking some roots, which look n feel more like dried leaves than hard roots, in my lye water. I'll show you guys the results of that later.
Then I infused some roots in coconut oil, which here, remains liquid where my soapy stuff is, in the kitchen. After a couple of weeks it wasn't becoming as dark as I wanted so I threw in some powder.
Here's what it the oils look like before I added the lye.
The infused coconut oil here is 18% of total oils. Maybe next time I'll infuse some rice bran instead, which I use more of in general, in any recipe. I planned on trying a lip balm with this ratanjot infusion, hence the usage of coconut oil.
Here's where the magic starts. As soon as I dumped in the lye, and started mixing with my spatula, my wine-like oils unfortunately did not turn into water lols but I did get a cool aurora borealis effect inside the pot. I doubt I'd get to see the real thing anytime soon, so I'm settling for this as the 5252nd best thing haha
Incidentally, I got trace with just my spatula in about 6mins, so I had that time with my magic batter. Trace and midway into the cook looked the same. Instead of purplish though, a mix of grey, blue and green. Unfortunately, the pictures don't do the color justice at all. It was loads more vibrant in the pot.
I was loving it. Then I panicked and wasn't able to take pics lol
I almost always add my coconut milk (reconstituted in part of the water required) at the end of my cook, and when I did my beautiful, magical batter turned into neon-ish green of all things, then into a really bleh brown, similar to instant coffee with milk lol
I realize it was the sugars in the milk but in previous soaps it only made the batter darker in shade, not change colors completely, so this came as a shock. Good thing when I unmolded I saw it again magically turned into something that veeeeeery slightly resembles purple, albeit a more grey one.
And here's a side by side shot with the soap that had the ratanjot mixed in the lye water.
This soap is about two months old though, so it's lighter than it initially was but not by much, and the color has stayed the same. In reality, which my camera doesn't capture, these two batches look very different.
I imagine alkanet will behave similarly but I haven't tried as I've not found out where I can get some. On another note, I've tried this infused oil thrice now, as a colorant in CP for swirls and all times it turned blue, the color I imagine indigo should be (but isn't in my case lol, but that's for another post).
Thanks for reading!
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