I had one batch of soap for this month’s challenge that didn’t gel properly on the swirled side. The soap texture was grainy, chalky and crumbly. I’ve seen it before... It happens when my emulsion starts out thin and I can’t get the heat up high enough to force it into gel. It didn’t seem ideal for confetti and I refuse to rebatch. So, I broke it up into smaller pieces and used my food processor to chop it even smaller. The result was a container of coarse, but granular soap bits. On a whim, I then tried the same thing with a bit of the white gelled soap from the striped side. That produced something much more like pie crust dough, but not quite as smooth as soap dough. I mixed the granular soap with enough batter to hold it together and used it for a layer. I used the doughy soap to make logs and some balls with confetti in the middle. I’m happy with the save. If you can ignore the greenish tinge of the background below, the soap colors are pretty close. I hope you can see the differences between the texture of the soap that was originally ungelled (bottom layer of pink soap) versus the “soap dough” circles in the yellow and pink soaps. The colorants are the same oxides and clay I used in the challenge soap. I’m less enthusiastic about the “soap dough,” but will definitely use the food processor approach again if I end up with another batch of crumbly soap. And, yes, my food processor is super clean after using it to chop soap.
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