Earthtone Handmade Soap 2012

For the uninitiated, I made an attempt at soapmaking and online selling in early 2000s. I made a lot of pretty soaps but did not do much to sell them. Eventually almost used them all up myself. :p. Fail.

Anyways, when I am back at my mother's place, I tried to make soap again. Sharing some pics from the process.

First, I calculated the recipe


There is a saponification value for every type of oil you use for soapmaking. The SAP chart is readily available on the net. I used Olive and Sunflower Oil for this batch.

This was the formula I used for this batch.
Oil: 1.5kg
Sodium Hydroxide: 195g
Water : 390g

Then, I dissolved the NaOH in water. It got hot and I waited till it wasn't so hot. Then heated up the oil to almost the same temp and added the measured oils into it.

I brought this stick blender from home to blend. But to my greatest horror. The blender is spoilt.



It is horror because. With the stick blender, the soap takes about 5 minutes to mix well. But without it, and using hand to stir......

One and a half hour!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

I regretted greatly for never trying it out at home first. Mr Husband, do you think you can repair it? If not, I will throw and not bring back.

I used a electric cake blender, and it did nothing to the speed of saponification. I still took about an hour or so, holding the blender like..siao!

You are suppose to stir till it gets to a creamy stage called 'trace'. Where if you scoop and dribble a small amount of soap on its surface it leaves a distinct line on the surface.

But I did not wait enough, because it was taking too long. Also, the mixture got cold halfway, and I had to take it to the stove and heat it up abit. The process requires heat to keep it going.And then I poured the mixure into two moulds. And wrapped it up with newspaper to keep the heat in.

Later I checked and saw this:



Lovely looking soap, but too soft. I stuck my finger in and a depression formed.

So I had to dig out the soap from the moulds and reheat the mixture.







Isn't this beautiful? I couldn't help oo-ing ahh-ing over the mixture.

"Doesn't it look like the yogurt the kids had this morning, Mom?"

"Yeah, yeah, yeah, enough. Why not scoop a cup for each of your children? " My mom laughed at me.

I was reminded why I began soaping. Soaps are the most beautiful things in the world.

Anyways, after heat treatment, some small lumps developed, and I reloaded the mixture into the moulds and am waiting now. I think they should harden up quite well this time. I hope.

Will show the pictures for the final soaps later.

Working with my mother was hilariously exasperating sometimes. She drives me to the wall with her over helpfulness, making loads of suggestions, some useful and some not. Like when I said the soap mixture needed to get to a thicker creamy stage before I could stop stirring , she suggested to add starch. She is a cake maker and loves to apply her cake making techniques to my soaps because they look alike. Lol.

So this morning, during the last stage, I poured the soap into the moulds and hurried to get them wrapped up in case of heat loss. But she wanted to scrap every last bit in and even tried to level the surface to make it look better, but you are making it look worse, Mom! I said and she did not care. I got all flustered and tried to quickly close up everything while she still tried to beautify the mixture and scolded me for acting so rushed.

"Why do you wanna make it so rush? Slowly! " She scolded me.
"Because you kacau me lah, quick quick quick, I need to tape this up quick. "
"Use string lah!" She continued kacau-ing me..
"No, no, no! I got scotch tape,no need! " I said.
She ignored me and went and get the string.
After I taped up, she STILL needed to tie the string over the wrapped soap containers which serve no purpose at all!
"There, you see, can mah!" She was victorious.

My eyes rolled so much to the back of my head that they rolled back to the front again.

Ok, mom.
It is both very hilarious and frustrating having her help me, but I enjoyed it still. Hahahah.