What is your recipe? Oils, butters, liquid, superfat, any additional additives including fragrance oil. Soaps can often be sent through gel anytime within the first week.Ok, so I added more clay for dark color but as it cured became very light again. So I am thinking it may be as others mentioned ....maybe I gelled the soaps (without realizing it)? I would like to try to gel these milk soap to see if the color pops. In past these bars were soft when I cut them, wouldn’t gelling make them harder to cut?
I have never gelled normal soap and never knowingly did a milk soap. Does anyone have any recommendations on temps to trigger full gel? I saw some suggestions for normal soaps, but wondering how to proceed without creating a glorious volcano. I think the milk in recipe may require the temps and insulation requirements to be lower than normal soaps?
You might be able to let your soap saponify for a day or two, then put it in the oven or on a heating pad to gel, reducing the likelihood of it overheating due to saponification.
Or, if you have high Stearic/Palmitic FAs and an accelerating fragrance, that option might be off the table, but you could unmold it, cut it, and later put it back in the mold and gel it via oven or heating pad.