Whip It Good!

I ventured into new territory (for me) a couple of weekends back and had too much fun. As best as I could, I documented my experience with photos. I made cold process whipped soap. Cold process whipped soap is assembled and formulated differently then cold process soap. When formulating your recipe use 80% hard/solid oils and 20% liquid oils. Hard and solid oils are whipped until white fluffy peaks form, then liquid oils are added. I worked with my oils and lye solution at room temperature. First, I lined my soap mold, mixed my micas, and weighed my fragrant oil.

Weigh out hard and solid oils in a stainless steel bowl. Little side note here - make sure you use a bowl that is big enough to accommodate the hard oils, the air you are going to whip into the oils, the soft oils, and lye solution! I learned the hard way.

To whisk in enough air into your oils you need to use a cake beater or some type of whisk attachment. I switched off between a cake beater and used my whisk attachment on my hand held. The ideal tool to use, if you are lucky enough to have is a stand-alone mixer like Kitchenaid. If I had one I am sure I would have whisked / whipped my oils longer.

HARD / SOLID OILS BEING WHIPPED


I should have paid better attention how long it took to form soft peaks - I would estimate that I whipped the hard and solid oils about 50 minutes.

LIQUID OILS WEIGHED OUT - POUR SMALL AMOUNT AT A TIME



Add the measured liquid oils to the whipped hard and solid oils a little at a time whipping each time after. Your beautiful stark white peaks will deflate a tad, that is OK. Whip to incorporate.

HARD/SOLID OILS MIXED WITH LIQUID OILS










With gloves and goggles on, add about 1/8 of a cup of lye solution at one time to the whipped oils. Whip WELL each time you add a little of the lye solution. Make sure all is incorporated. Once all the lye is throughly whipped in add fragrance or essential oil. whip until a yogurt or soft cream cheese consistency.

If you plan on adding color now is the time to separate the raw soap and add your colors. Do not worry about your soap getting hard. I had plenty of time to color and play around molding my soap.

RAW SOAP SEPERATED FOR COLOR



MICA THAT I PREPARED BEFORE MIXING OILS AND LYE









I kept some soap in the bowl uncolored to have white.


MICA MIXED WITH RAW SOAP




The fun part for me was molding this soap! It does not pour like a thin trace cold process soap. I had to glop it into the mold - very simply to spread around. Side note, this soap hardens VERY hard and can be hard to cut without crumbling. If using a log mold you will probably need to use a wire-cutter. I am using a mold that has inserts so I will need to just pop the bars out. I would not use a fancy mold with designs (although if you can make it work, let me know!). This soap tends to REALLY adhere itself to the mold and even to the inserts! It was kind of a pain to release.

MOLD I LINED BEFORE MIXING OIL AND LYE



RAW SOAP PUT INTO MOLD



INSERTING DIVIDERS



UNMOLDED BARS!


In the pic below, not sure if you can see - the edge of the bar of soap broke as I was unmolding. GRRR!






Oh yeah........




THE SOAP FLOATS!