Whipped Soap Cupcakes

I looooove making cupcake soaps - love it, love it, love. it.

I’ve tried to make my soap cupcakes (bottoms and tops) out of cold process soap before, but the cold process frosting never seems to work out very well for me. Maybe (probably!) I’m just too impatient waiting for it to thicken up. In any case, I always find that I have more consistent results when I make the cupcake bottoms out of cold process and the frosting tops out of whipped soap.

I’ve made whipped soap before, you may remember this previous post: http://oilandbutter.blogspot.ca/2013/07/whipped-soap.html

To recap the basics of whipped soap:

1. You need a higher ratio of hard oils to soft oils.

2. Your lye must be cool.

3. No stickblender! You need an electric mixer for this soap.

4. You need to make your colors darker than you want them to be, because they turn lighter/pastel.

5. Do not gel this soap.
6. Interestingly, whipped soap does not seem to get ash...bonus!

While I was browsing my Soap Crafting book (I highly recommend this book, by the way!), I noticed that Anne-Marie has a recipe for cupcake soaps in it, with the bottoms being made out of CP and the tops out of whipped soap, so I was very excited to give these new recipes a try!  

Just a warning, this post is very picture heavy - there is a video at the end if you'd prefer to watch that instead! :)

I followed Anne-Marie's recipe for the cold process cupcake bottoms and colored them green, because I am using a delicious watermelon fragrance for these cupcakes:

Next, I prepared my oils for the whipped soap, see the amount of coconut and palm oil in the container compared to olive oil? You can't even really see the olive oil, but there is a little bit in there!

Then, I melted the oils and cooled them until they were semi-solid and at room temperature:

Then I used my electric mixer and mixed:

And mixed:

And mixed - until the soap had started to thicken up like whipped cream:

 

Next, I added my cold lye, very carefully to avoid splashes:

I mixed a little bit more on low speed with the mixer to make sure the lye solution was incorporated well:

Then I switched to hand mixing, carefully stirring through the bottom to make sure all of the lye had been incorporated:

Now, I can add some color...I am using pink mica:

I made it a shade darker than I needed it, because whipped soap fades as it cures:

I filled my fancy piping bag:

Okay, it's not so fancy....it's just a freezer bag with a large open star tip :)

I began by piping a dollop of frosting onto the center of each cupcake:

Then I swirled the frosting around the dollop, working my way up higher and ending up in the center:

I had 3 mini cupcakes left over, and I topped all of the cupcakes with mini (melt and pour) cherries:

Then I added glitter:

These were too much fun to make and they smell amazing - I forgot how much I enjoyed making whipped soap!

And here is my video of the whole process: