DYING here people!! : D
I have been baking as long as I can remember. I have baked for friends parties, wedding receptions, for big family gatherings etc. I have made every cake under the sun that you can think of, big or small.
So my soapy secret are simply that, I make my soaps the way I bake. No, don`t worry, I don`t taste the soap batter. Anymore...
But I think soaping and baking has a lot of the same principles and "secrets" to them. And you can be creative on so many levels. Which is why I think I enjoy it so much.
Here are my take on secrets, that aren`t really secrets at all, just similarities to how I try to make things go as planned and with a nice result when I bake. Nothing revolutionary here, just how I do it.
1) Preparation is key! Lay out your ingredients, weigh things carefully, use clean utensils, have papertowels or clean rags on hand & take hygiene very seriously. Remember, people will be exposed to your end product - wether it is a cake or a bar of soap. Let us give them a good and pleasant experience.
2) Don`t overwork the dough if you want a nice soft cake!
(as in don`t stickblend your soapbatter into oblivion, sometimes less is more)
3) Use good ingredients and no skimping on quality. This will make everything so much better in the end
(i.e fresh eggs and real butter / or for soap - good oils that aren`t rancid or smelly butters)
4) Take your time and TRY and do things in the right order.
If you stress, or you are really short on time, this is not the time do it. Save it for another time if you can, it will make everything go so much smoother and your experience will be more fun.
5) All the fancy stuff in the world won`t make a good cake/soap. Seriously.
Focusing on learning the basics, and nail the simple things first and foremost, then work your way up to things that are more elaborate. A simple recipe done well can often be sooo much better, than something intricate done not so good. Any chef will tell you this is true.
6) Follow the recipe.
Yes, sometimes you can play along with some ingredients, (vanilla/no vanilla, color/fragrance /no color/fragrance etc)
But in the whole - let`s stick to the plan, shall we?
Adding things in a carefully balanced recipe will make things unbalanced!
Know what you are doing before you start to add and subtract ingredients that may affect the batter in a negative way - this goes for cakes as well as soaps.
This is how I always have done it since I started to bake over 30 years ago, and I just found it aplickable to soaping too. So no secrets really, but anyway...
