Soapy soap

Please check my eBay account for items I have for sale. I am currently selling two variety packs and a pair of coffee-scrub soaps. :)

Off to Oxford

I'm off to Oxford. Weeeee

Green tea and mint Coffe-scrub

Wouldn't believe this was the same batch!

Need to give it time to harden though. Still soft as cheese

Progress of the green tea and mint soap.

This is the green tea and mint soap on day one.  The colour is more coffee like then the coffee soap.  I thing this shows how much colouring is put in commercial green tea soap to make it green...  Worrying indeed!

Coffe-scrub soap is for sale one eBay.
I am also selling a Variety pack as well.

Green tea with mint and exfoliating coffee grounds

Today I unmolded batch two of the coffee soap. Picture a shows it taking up my window sill. I am always surprised by the colour it turns. Every batch is different. The cylindrical ones look a bit like bird shells. I quite like the effect.

Picture b is today's experiment: green tea and mint with coffee grounds. I swear the green tea blend look more coffee like then the coffee batch does. Can't wait to see how they turn out.

Lemon teacake, gluten free recipe

Hey, it's been awhile since I posted an allergen friendly recipe. This one my grandmother just sent to me. It's very rare she sends me recipes so this one must actually taste good. :). Also being lemon flavoured cake it's probably dirt cheap to make.

As always to convert it a egg/dairy free recipe substitute your milk and egg alternatives. I reckon that almond or hazelnut milk would compliment the lemon flavour really well.

Edit:  Sorry about that.  For some reason the resolution of the photo has gone bad where I've uploaded it.  It was perfectly legible in the email i was sent. So  I will just have to type up the ingredients and instructions myself.

Ingrediendt:

6 eggs (separated) or 6 tablespoons of Orgran egg replacer.
1 cup caster sugar
2 tsps finely grated lemon rind
2 cups almond meal
1 tblsp lemon juice
1/2 tsp almond essence
IF you are using an egg substitute you will need some liquid. 1 cup of water or milk should suffice.

Cream cheese frosting

25g butter (or dairy free margarine)
60g cream cheese (or dairy-free substitute)
1 tsp finely grated lemon rind
1 1/2 cups icing sugar

Method

Cake

1) grease or line your baking tray and preheat oven to 160 degrees Celsius.
2) a)  Using eggs - beat the egg yolks with the sugar and rind in a mixing bowl until fluffy.  Add the almond meal, juice and essence and stir together.
In a seperate mixing bowl beat the egg whites until peaks form and then gently fold the almond meal mixture into the beaten egg whites.

B) Without eggs - mix the almond meal with sugar and lemon rind.  add the milk, juice and essence and mix well.

3) place prepared mixture in baking tray and place in an oven for 45mins or until cooked.

Frosting

Beat your butter, cream cheese (or their dairy free substitutes) and rind in a bowl until light and fluffy.  Gradually mix in icing sugar until completely combined.  Smooth over cold cake.

No soap today :(

So I have been a little focused on soap the past week.  The secret is I have been avoiding my academic work (which is precisely what I am doing now).  I have a nice 17500 words to write for May over the course of a dissertation, and 3 separate essays.  The enormity of the work I have to get done makes me feel... A little stressed.

I have been coping with the stress by forcing myself to free write a paragraph of dissertation everyday and then by avoiding it with other things.  Bad tv programmes seem preferable to my work load.  Of course every day I put it off is a day I lose for work. So I am now trying to force myself to do more.

I did myself a bullet pint list today of highe priority items to finish.  Of corse the top 4 were academic ly relevant.  Impulsively I scrawled underneath Its Managable!! Which I underlined...  It's like a school yard charm.  Not sure it will work...

Coffee-scrub sold! Yay!

I made my first sale today! Woo! I did notice though that were a few others watching the item so I have relisted my coffee scrub soap on eBay for any one else who wants. I am selling them at cost at the moment. I may have to make more.

The lemon and ginger soap failed!!

This blog uses soaper jargon - here's a glossary.

Cold process: one form of soap making

Lye: the active ingredient to the soap making process - also know as caustic soda.

Saponification: the technical term for how oil and caustic soda form soap

Trace: the point at which the soap mixture ceases to separate.

Seize: a sudden onset of the trace point.

Discounting: reduce the amount of liquid in the recipe - not for the inexperienced!!

This batch was an experiment. I started by discounting the liquid. This should have been fine. But the appearance and texture of this batch indicates three things went wrong - the batch maintained an uneven temperature, the batch failed to mix sufficiently and the batch used a little too much lye.

First thing I noticed in the outside was the traces of soda ash. This is harmless. Soda ash appear, from what I have read, when the soap super heats inconsistently. This is because I don't insulate my soap (I rarely need to). The orange spots and the internal colour differentiations are signs that the soap mixture was not mixed properly when it went into the moulds. However, I had achieved a proper level of 'trace' so the oil was properly emulsified with the liquids. What I suspect happened is my mixture is it ' seized' in the mixing process. I have never had a mixture seize before. I now know it from the description. It is what happens when a soap mix forms a sudden heavy 'trace'. I think this has happened because I used a mixed liquid base and discounted the water. This has meant that the soap has pockets where it is oil rich and pockets where it is lye rich. This can be solved by re batching the soap but there is a third problem with this batch.

I made a classic mistake when I was mixing this lot. I measured too much lye. The 'superfat' level is only 1-2% which means the resultant soap is in this case too crumbly to hold together. Superfat is a term used to describe the percentage of oils level un-saponified during the cold process.The irony is I have made a block of soap with 0% superfat and it turned out perfect. But then every recipe acts different.