Last weekend I found the time to try a ghost swirl. It didn't quite turn out as expected, but it's very good at being invisible, so I guess it kind of worked. 👻
For a ghost swirl, no colorants are used. The pattern is created by using two soap batters with different amounts of water. The oils and fats are exactly the same, the amount of lye is the same, you just play around with the water content. #SoapMaking@soapmaking
The first step in turning bacon fat into lard for #SoapMaking is to clean the grease, aka render it.
Place grease into a pot with twice as much water as grease. Bring to a boil and boil for 15 minutes, until grease and water are well combined. Don't allow this mixture to boil over or you'll start a fire. After boiling, refrigerate until the grease hardens. The grease will float to the top and the water and impurities will sink. Scoop the grease from the top and save it. Discard the dirty water.
Since I boil my grease in a large stockpot it's easiest to carry the pot outside into the cold winter environment instead of placing it in the refrigerator. If you live in a warm environment you may need to render small amounts at a time in order to fit it into your refrigerator.
The grease should be rendered at least three, if not more, times until the odor is neutral and no impurities remain. #SoapMaking#DIY
After much delay, I have finally finished rendering my bacon grease into fat for soap making. I rendered it eight times. It's now free of impurities and virtually scent free. Soon I'll make more soap. #SoapMaking#BaconGrease#rendering
The day before yesterday, I made my first soap with the Ciaglia technique of rebatching soap shreds. I had a lot of leftovers from my rose soap and turned them into a rosy brick, I guess. :blob_cat_eyes_owo:
And I made a soap with mare's milk (powdered, actually, no horses around) that I am quite curious to unmold today.
My soaps usually don't contain any animal fats or milks but the mare's milk was a gift and I wasn't going to let it go to waste either. #SoapMaking
Saturday was #SoapMaking day. Those were supposed to be springtime colors but they turned out all christmassy. The soap smells of roses and I meant to give it away in the new year. But maybe it wants to be a Christmas soap.
in 1947, when there were shortages of soap, Mrs W. Cockman 😆 of #Kitchener Ontario (Soap Capitol now 😆) sent in this photo of Mrs Sam Rohr who made 65 lbs of soap, 4 times a year
Double, double toil and trouble;
Fire burn and caldron bubble.
Fillet of a fenny snake,
In the caldron boil and bake;
It looks like it lightened up overnight, but most of what I see is soda ash. 😜
The small crack and pulling from the edge tells me it had some heat in it when I wrapped it up. We'll let it sit another day before trying to get it out of the mold.
I made some red-and-white soap a couple months ago that took 5 days to firm up enough to cut. This is the same recipe with a pretty significant reduction in water content, and it's still super soft. I imagine I won't be able to cut it until next week some time.
The red-and-white soap turned out to be pretty good once it cured, so I'm hoping this one will be in the same boat. Still removing the recipe from the book, though.
This batch actually turned out pretty good. It just looks terrible because I put too much water in it so it wound up sloshing around a bit. I may give it another shot next time I have the lye out.
They have the usual soda ash, but the new batch is looking decent. I put about 1/4 of the pigment I put in last time, so I'm hoping the bars won't make everything red. Fingers crossed.
To make sure it was the recipe and not the temperature/humidity, I mixed up a batch of known-good-recipe soap. After 24 hours, it's as hard as the bad batch after 7 days.
:ablobcatpopcorn:
Bad recipe marked for deletion.