Great Cakes Soapworks - May Soap Challenge Club

Are you familiar with Amy Warden’s Soap Challenge Club? Each month she picks a new soaping technique to highlight, and offers a video tutorial where she demonstrates the technique and gives access to a helpful written tutorial along with tonnes of tips and tricks to help you learn the technique. The members then submit their own versions of the soaps that they have created based on this technique, and the soap club members vote on their favorites and the winners win fantastic prizes such as gift certificates or supplies such as soaping equipment or fragrances. Last month, Amy was able to add a great new international option - so, those of us that are outside of the US can compete separately and win prizes too! :)

For this next month, I was so honored that Amy asked me to guest host the Soap Challenge Club! The theme this month is dessert soaps - and you know how much I love foodie soaps! I got right to work designing some fun dessert-themed soaps:

Blueberry Pies:

 Carrot Cakes:

Raspberry Milkshakes:

Ombre Rosette Cakes:

Believe it or not - that was the easy part! The next challenge for me was to shoot a video tutorial - I have always avoided videos, they scare me! But, I’m always up for a challenge and thought that this would be a good opportunity to learn how to do this. In the video tutorial, I explain how I made an assortment of the dessert soaps seen above, along with how to make the fondant-like soap that I used to sculpt the carrots on the top of the carrot cakes. In the written tutorial, I offer lots of options, tips and tricks that can be used for making desserts soaps.  

So, if you enjoy a challenge - this is exactly what you are looking for! The Soap Challenge Club is a great way to stretch your soapmaking skills and learn some new techniques you may have not had the opportunity to try before. The membership will grant you access to the private instructional video and written instructions during the month of the challenge. This month’s grand prize for the U.S. soapmakers is a $100 gift certificate from Bramble Berry, and for the international soapmakers it is a $100 gift certificate from Voyageur Soap & Candle Co!!

In addition to the grand prizes, there will also be two 2nd and 3rd place winners and 2 Sponsor's Choice prize winners! Voyageur will provide a $25 gift certificates for their 3 winners, and Bramble Berry will have these 4-oz fragrance oils for their 3 winners:

2^nd and 3^rd place winners will receive free registration to the next month's Challenge Club as well!

Registration opens April 27 and closes May 4, 2015. Here is the link to register: https://www.greatcakessoapworks.com/products/soap-challenge-club-membership

Looking forward to seeing you there, and I can’t wait to see what creative dessert soaps you guys come up with! 

Introducing Soaps and Suds TV

I have some exciting news to share! I was asked a little while ago by the team at Waywire if I would be interested in curating a channel devoted to soap making. A channel devoted to soap making…how fun is that?!

Curated video, such as Waywire, is a completely new concept to me - but I love the idea of gathering and organizing all of our favorite videos in one place (much like a traditional TV channel would), so of course I said yes and got right to work on it!   

In addition to soap making, I have rounded out the channel to include all things bath and body related. The sub channels will include hot and cold process soap making, melt and pour soaps, bath products, creams and lotions, and I will be adding a few other categories as well. The videos will include DIY bath and body recipes, as well as informative tutorials and helpful tips. I have already started adding videos and will be sharing my own videos on there as well, and I will continue to add new relevant videos on a regular basis, so stay tuned and be sure to bookmark the channel and visit often! 

Here is the link: Soaps and Suds TV

PS - See if you can spot my first attempt at a soaping video for the channel. Sadly, it ended in a massive soap seize (of course!), but I thought I would put it up anyway….enjoy! =)

How to straighten photo using PicMonkey

It seems like sometimes, no matter how carefully and straight I try to aim my camera lens, I end up with crooked pictures! I know it's just a silly little thing to fuss about, but sometimes it drives me crazy! Case in point:

Now, I could have sworn when I lined up that photo that the bottom was all squared up with the frame of my lens! I know it's such a small detail, but it's actually super easy to fix in PicMonkey (my favorite photo editing site). I was happy to discover this trick a little while ago and wanted to share it with you guys:

Step 1: 
Upload your photo, and under Basic Edits choose "Rotate":

Step 2:
Click on the "Straighten" button...notice how it places that grid over the photo?

Step 3:
Now, drag the straighten button to the left or the right, and it will rotate your photo either left or right. You can use the grid to guide you as to how straight your photo is within the frame:

Ah, much better! Just 3 easy steps, and see how the bottom is all lined up nicely along the frame? Now I can sleep tonight! :D

PS - I'm not super picky about this all the time...sometimes I do take crooked pictures on purpose! ;)

Ice Wine Soap

I hope you all had a lovely Easter weekend! We just returned from spending the weekend in Whistler, BC, which is a lovely little resort village nestled at the base of the Blackcomb and Whistler mountains, near Vancouver, BC. You may have heard of Whistler, as the 2010 Winter Olympics and Paralympics were hosted here:

Photo by Jon Wick licensed under CC by 2.0 

 Photo by Jon Wick licensed under CC by 2.0

Even though we have had a relatively mild winter in BC, the skiing and snowboarding were still amazing high up in the mountain. Admittedly, I am not as much of an outdoors enthusiast as my husband and kids, but I really appreciated the views of the snow-covered mountains, the cozy feeling of the village, and the foodie aspect along with the shopping that the village offered. Speaking of food, I stumbled upon this amazing bakery called Purebread:

I wanted to pitch a tent and camp outside their door all day and night. I cannot say enough good things about their rustic but elegant cakes, breads, and pastries; Raspberry Chocolate Loaf, Hazelnut Fig Bread, Salted Caramel Bar, Morning Glory (muffin? croissant? whatever it was, it was amazing!), Lavender Earl Grey Scone, Berries and Cream Puff, Brown Sugar Sponge Cake, etc. I seriously wanted to order one of everything, and I am convinced it is quite possibly the best bakery on this entire planet. Although, my son reminded me I have not been to Paris. Touché, son.

My daughter really loved the Lucia Gelato, and of course you can’t go there without treating yourself to a Beavertail pastry, which seems to be a staple of the Canadian ski slopes! Cows ice cream was my husband and sons’ favorite. We also had an amazing burger with fresh-cut fries at Boomburger. And even though it’s a small village, there are 3 Starbucks there!

How does this all tie into soap making? Well, while I was there, I noticed that many of the gift shops featured ice wine gifts; ice wine tea, truffles, cookies, syrup, etc. Now, I admittedly am not a wine connoisseur, and I have never heard of ice wine before, so I had to research it. It turns out that ice wine is a type is a dessert wine that is produced from grapes that have been collected while they are frozen on the vine. Because the water in the grapes is frozen, this allows for a more concentrated grape juice to be squeezed from the frozen grapes. Ice wine harvesting is fussy - the frozen grapes must be picked on the first morning that it is cold enough, and the whole crop needs to be picked within a few hours! This results in a smaller amount but more concentrated and very sweet wine; needless to say, it is also pricier than traditional wine because of the risk and smaller yield associated with this type of harvesting.

Naturally, my thoughts turned to using ice wine in soap! I have wanted to try wine in soap for a while, and thought it would be fun to try an Ice Wine soap inspired by our trip to Whistler.

Seeing as I was only using this ice wine in soap, I chose the least expensive bottle that I could find, which was this bottle of 2011 bottle of merlot ice wine from the Okanagan Valley in BC:

To prepare the wine for soap making, you need to boil some of the alcohol out first, as this will help you avoid any heat volcanoes during and after your soap making. To do this, you need to simmer your wine on low for about 15 minutes (which should remove about 60% of the alcohol content). Studies have demonstrated that simmering, even for long periods, will reduce some, but not all of the alcohol*. 

Unfortunately, I got distracted and ended up simmering mine for much longer than I wanted too - about 30 minutes, and I was left with a very sticky and condensed syrupy mixture. My poor kids were convinced I had started a brewery in our kitchen - the wine aroma was so strong! I ended up reconstituting the syrup with some water to make it thinner and then let it cool overnight. I did taste a tiny bit of the condensed wine, and it was VERY sweet and tasted very much like a strongly concentrated grape juice. It would make an amazing drizzle on top of some vanilla bean ice cream….mmmm!

To make this ice wine soap, I used just enough water to melt my lye (just over a 1:1 ratio of water:lye). I added the ice wine at trace. I used a combination of strawberry and rhubarb to fragrance the soap, which had the perfect balance of pungent, fruity, juicy and tart elements to compliment an ice wine infused soap.  

Whenever I make soap with a new (unfamiliar) ingredient, I try to have a plan A, B and C in place:

Plan A is in case it moves really fast - my goal here is just to plunge the soap into the mold as fast as I can, nothing fancy here. 

Plan B is in case it behaves well and I have some playtime, I can play around with some embeds or layering and texturing the tops. 

Plan C is my always my failsafe plan; in case all of the above goes horribly wrong, I can always throw the soap in the oven and hot process it….it may not turn out as pretty, but it produces a perfectly usable soap!

This turned out to be a Plan A on the verge of a Plan C soap. When I added the ice wine, the soap immediately turned chocolate brown and thickened up…so much so, that I could barely get the fragrance evenly distributed. Did I mention that the raw soap stunk? Like that lovely ammonia-like smell that we get in soap making from using milks (thankfully, this unwelcome fragrance usually dissipates fairly quickly). Also, because the raw soap color had turned so dark from the ice wine, I had to blindly add some burgundy and violet mica, hoping that as the soap cures out, I will be left with something of a merlot color.

I was hoping to take pictures of the previous part of the process, but you can see how this part got away on me!

Because of the extra sugars in the wine, I immediately put the soap in the freezer to keep it cool. It is kind of a plain soap, so I jazzed it up by adding some blue, violet and iridescent glitter to the tops along with some iridescent star confetti: 

PS - After making this soap, I found this wonderful article by Anne L. Watson on formulating and experimenting with beer and wine in soaps, I really wish I had read it before I attempted this soap...hope you find it helpful if you decide to try this -> Beer and Wine Soaps

PPS - Jenny at I'd Lather Be Soaping has a great video and blog post on making wine soap too!  

*Alcohol Retention in Food Preparation. Journal of the American Dietetic Association. 92:486-488 *http://www.ars.usda.gov/SP2UserFiles/Place/80400525/Data/retn/retn06.pdf

Blackberry Sage Soap (with piped rosettes)

I haven't made a 'me' soap in a while, and thought I would like to have another try at a rosette soap. You may remember this post from all the way back in June 2013, when I first made soap rosettes!



There are a couple of things to keep in mind when doing this type of soap with a piping technique:

1. Work at low temps (90 to 100 degree lye solution for me)
2. Choose a slow moving recipe
3. Select a fragrance that does not accelerate or discolor

My first attempt this time was this soap:

It is fragranced with Birthday Cake, and while it turned out okay, I thought I would like to try it again with a smaller tip to see if I could get more definition in the flowers (I use open-star tips for my rosettes).

Because I am fragrancing this one with Blackberry Sage, I pictured a light earthy green for the bottom and a muted purple topping. I actually colored the whole soap a very slight green, similar to the color you would have if you had used pomace olive oil in your recipe. I poured the bottoms, leaving some room at the top for the rosettes:

I remember (maybe from a tutorial of Amy's?) that if you place something on top of your mold, the soap underneath will set up a bit faster, so I placed a baking sheet on top of my molds while I prepared the rest of my soap, so that the base would be ready for my heavier rosettes.

I colored the rest of my soap with purple mica. It's a muddy purple, because the base was slightly green, but I think it works for this blackberry soap. I stickblended it until it was thick enough for piping and put it in my piping bag:

I test my soap, to make sure it will hold up for piping - this is holding it's shape well and looks good to go! 

Working on the piping, I think the smaller tip is better...you can see the rosettes better:

It is also important to tap down your molds as you are piping your rosettes, it helps the rosettes to settle a bit in the base soap and spread out slightly toward the sides of the mold. Here they all are in the mold:

And out!

It's a very simple technique, but so versatile...I love the way these turned out! :)

 

Using Aloe Vera (freeze dried) Powder in Soap

I am not familiar with freeze dried aloe vera powder at all, but I received a sample from Aloe Vera of California and decided to give it a try:

According to the literature I received with the sample, the aloe gel is harvested and concentrated, and then freeze dried and ground into a fine powder and mixed with maltodextrin. Maltodextrin is a starch-derived food additive that is commonly used as a thickening or filling agent in foods; in this case, I am wondering if it is being used to prevent clumping? 

This aloe vera powder is food grade and certified organic, and their prices seem very reasonable!  The powder I am using is a 100:1 concentration, and they also offer a 200:1 concentration and a 50:1 concentration. 

I have used aloe vera juice in soap, and this powder can be reconstituted to make aloe vera juice. The powder is very economical to use, because it has a long shelf life (2 years) and you just need such a small amount of the powder (99 parts of distilled water to 1 part aloe vera powder, if using the 100:1 concentrated powder) to make the aloe vera juice. Once you have made your aloe vera juice, you can use it right away (chill it first) or freeze it into cubes to use later.

I am testing this reconstituted juice using my favorite 100% coconut oil and aloe vera juice recipe from Kenna of Modern Soapmaking (click on the text in the blue box below to access the recipe):

TUTORIAL: DEFYING THE RULES OF SOAPMAKING (100% COCONUT OIL SOAP)

I actually converted the liquid in her recipe to grams because I am used to working in grams, so I measured out 297 grams of water to mix with 3 grams of aloe vera powder:

Then, add the aloe vera powder to your distilled water to make the aloe vera juice:

I noticed the powder didn't completely dissolve right away, but that may have been because I was busy taking pictures and didn't stir it as it was going in; in any case, after letting it chill in the fridge (it needs to be chilled for Kenna’s recipe), it was all dissolved and the water was clear.

Once it had sufficiently chilled, I measured out the lye and added it to the aloe vera juice - the aloe juice turned a very cool bright yellow when mixed with the lye!

It was cloudy at first but then settled to a clear yellow color. While I was waiting for my aloe vera lye solution to cool down, I measured out the rest of my ingredients. This is the easiest soap to make, because there is only one oil to measure - the coconut oil!

From past experience in working with this recipe, I remember that this soap likes to heat up like crazy, so I actually chilled my molds in the freezer prior to pouring the soap:

I previously had not noted on Kenna’s instructions that she recommends you add half your lye solution to your coconut oil and stickblend well, then add the remaining half of your lye solution. I asked her the reasoning behind this, and she says it is to make sure the some doesn't trace too quickly - great tip! I will try this method with my other soap recipes too - my base recipe comes to trace VERY quickly, so I am hoping this method might give me a bit more time. 

As Kenna suggests, I brought my soap to very thin trace only (just until it was emulsified). For the color, I wanted kind of a mossy green, so I am going to try this Woodland Green mica powder from Lather & Lotions:

I love using micas because there is no premixing required, I just stir them with a whisk into the raw soap:

I also wanted try this lovely Lavender Green Tea fragrance from Brambleberry; apparently it was one of the winning fragances from their 2012 S.O.A.P. panel. It is described on their website as being “fresh and clean smelling, almost like a linen scent. It reminded one of our panelists of an Aveda blend with its natural lavender notes.” Sounds divine, right? And a perfect match for an aloe soap :)

Once you have added your color and fragrance, you are ready to pour your soap into the mold:

Look at that dreamy green color! :)

Putting it in individual molds helps to prevent the soap from heating up too much; however, despite my best efforts, this one did start to heat up and was gelling in the centers, so I immediately placed the soaps in the freezer.

Again, this recipe sets up super fast, so you want to remove it from your molds and cut it within 6 to 12 hours (make sure you handle with gloves as the soap will still be caustic at this point).

In my case, because they were in individual molds and I put my soap in the freezer, I was actually able to remove these soaps from the mold after only 1.5 hours! I ended up with partially gelled soaps, but I think it works in this soap. And it actually allowed me to see what the color of this mica would be gelled and ungelled, which is pretty cool!

Fragrance Oil Testing

I am in the process of testing some new fragrances :)

These fragrances are very exotic to me....I usually gravitate towards bakery and sweet scents, so it is good for me to branch out and try new things! I haven't tried any new fragrances in while, so it was nice to pull out my trusty cold process testing recipe to try out these new fragrances.

As many experienced soapmakers will tell you, it is always a good idea to test any new fragrances in CP (and MP) before you use them. The chemical process involved in making cold process soap can very often change the color and performance of your fragrance oils in the cured soap. Even in melt and pour soap, the vanilla content of the fragrance oil can change the color of your finished soap over time.

I like to use a basic olive oil/coconut oil/palm oil recipe for testing my fragrances in cold process soap.When I am testing fragrances, I bring my cold process soap to very thin trace (just emulsion) before splitting it out into individual portions for testing. In this case, I used 4 ounces of raw soap to 0.25 ounces of fragrance oil for testing (which is equivalent to 1 ounce of fragrance per pound of oils, if my math is correct!). I bring the soap to thin trace only, so that I have time to split it out and mix the fragrance oils well into each portion and check for any color changes, morphing of fragrances, or any acceleration that may occur.

The fragrances that I am testing are from a new (to me) company - they have previously been selling fragrances in Latin America, and now have a store in the US, Paris Fragrances.

Here are my observations upon pouring, along with the scent descriptions from their site:

Breu Branco Brazilian Wood: No acceleration noted, no discoloration noted on pouring. Top Notes: Bergamot and lemon in a warm woody fragrance. Finished out with notes of pink pepper, black pepper, paprika.

Buriti Amazonian Fruity: Accelerated, no discoloration noted on pouring. Buriti is a fruity floral musky fragrance from the fruits of a rain forest palm tree called Buriti.

Belissima Bella Donna: No acceleration, no discoloration noted. Sophisticated fragrance. This one is very soft and floral to me. 

Pitanga Red Brazilian Fruit: No acceleration noted, no discoloration on pouring. This Brazilian cherry fruit is from the south forests of Brazil. Pitanga in the native Brazilian language (tupi) means red. Top Notes: Red pitanga, tangerine, grapefruit. Exotic smell, it is fruity - hot and sweet.

Pink Guava Brazilian Fruit: No acceleration noted, slight discoloration on pouring. Top notes: Slightly citrus, like orange or bergamot - a juicy mix of orange, cashew, guava and other notes.

Here are the fragrances just 2 hours after pouring. You can see even after 2 hours, some of them are starting to discolor already. PS - I am in love the butter yellow color of the Bella Donna fragrance! 

First impressions? My nose was immediately drawn to the Breu Branco Brazilian Wood, so that is what I soaped first. While bakery scents are my first love, woodsy fragrances are a close second :)

2 hours after pouring, I can't stop sniffing the Pitanga Red Brazilian Fruit, it is intoxicating! 

I will update this blog post again in 1 week and then 1 month after the soaps have cured, to assess how the colors and fragrances have held up.