Crock Pot Transparent Soap

8 oz castor oil
5 oz coconut oil
2.5 oz Stearic acid
1 oz olive oil
14 oz. lard
4 oz Lye
8 oz water
(read instructions below for when to add the following ingredients)
8 oz sugar
3 oz boiling water
13 oz of 70% ethanol alcohol (vodka will work)
3 oz glycerin

Measure oils and put into crock pot to melt. Mix lye with water and stir until completely dissolved. Remove oils from heat or if you don’t have a removable pot turn off heat. Pour lye/water mixture into fats and bring to trace. Warning - it traces very quickly so you have to use the stick blender to make sure that it is well blended. Return to heat and cook for about 60 minutes or until it reaches gel Vaseline stage (applesauce). There is no need to stir during this process.

Meanwhile, dissolve the 8 oz of sugar in the 3 oz of boiling water. Make sure the sugar is completely dissolved.

At the gel Vaseline stage remove the cover and add the sugar water, 13 oz of 70% ethanol alcohol and 3 oz of glycerin. Replace lid and let cook until it is liquid and clear. Stir periodically; process will take approximately 3 hours. When all is clear and liquid, turn the heat off. Skim off any unmelted soap and foam. Scent and color. Pour into your mold. This will be liquid like water when you pour into the molds. I tried to replace the lard with palm oil but it did not get as clear, so I recommend sticking with the lard.

Jan Murray submitted the original version of this formula to Southern Soapers Forum in Jan 2000.

Use full Gel when doing CP Overpours

Why Make Ungelled Soap?

Less heat build up in your soap mold means that the more fragile, or volatile elements of your expensive essential oils, do not get lost to the intense heat that gel stage creates. Did you know the internal temperature of a batch of soap in full gel stage can exceed 220 degrees? This heat can not only burn off the lighter components of essential oil and fragrance oil, but also scorch the proteins in milk. By keeping temps lower, you have lighter colored milk soaps. You don’t have to overcompensate with scent materials, and can save money using less essential oil or fragrance oil. Esthetically, ungelled soap has a very fine, smooth texture. This is because the molecules are moving so S L O W L Y during saponification that they line up ‘dress right dress’ like little soldiers. Try the following experiment:

Rub your hands together in a hurried fashion. Feel that warmth? Now rub your hands together very slowly. No heat, right? This is the same principle occurring when you start making Cold Process soap with warm lye and warm oil mixtures. The friction of fast moving molecules builds up to a mass in the center of the mold, resulting in the batch going into ‘gel stage’.  If your batch gets too hot, it will result in something we refer to as a soap volcano! By using lower starting lye and oil temps, you constrain the speed the molecules are moving at, thereby limiting the build up of excess heat, and avoid gel stage.

Nag Champa in Gel Stage

You are looking at a photo of a batch of my swirled Nag Champa soap, poured about 2 hours before this photo was taken. Right now, this batch is in gel stage, but not quite spread to the outermost edges. The mass of soap is having an exothermic reaction, heat is building up as oil and lye molecules are moving about creating friction and transforming into soap. Gel stage starts in the center of the mold, and moves in an outward manner. Eventually, if full gel stage is reached, the entire batch will change to the slightly darker shade that you see almost to the edges of this batch. Sometimes a batch will stay at this point, not enough heat gets generated to extend the exothermic reaction all the way to the mold edges and corners. If you see your batch stopping in a partial gel, you can “push” it the rest of the way by setting your mold in a 170 degree oven for a few hours. External heat will allow the edges, or ‘rind’ of ungelled soap to move toward the rest of the gelled mass.

Ungelled Tropical Fruit Slices

Next, we have a photo of a batch of yellow & orange swirled Tropical Fruit Slices soap, which was made with lower starting temps. The Tropical Fruit Slices fragrance oil has a high ratio of Grapefruit essential oil in it, which is very volatile. Lower temps and avoiding gel stage allow this fragrance to remain true and strong in the finished soap. I love to use this technique for all my citrus essential oils also. In this second batch using lower temperatures, the base oils were about 75 - 78 degrees, previously mixed, melted, and then cooled. You will need to have at least 40% loose oils to have a cool base oils formula that is still a mixable slurry when 75 - 80 degrees. The lye solution was cooled to 50 - 60 degrees. This batch was mixed very cool, and experienced a temporary “False Trace” where the cold lye solution hits the cool base oils and thickens up initially. The soap mixture quickly loosens up again though as the lye and oils start to react and create friction and heat. Continue mixing as usual, moving right through that false trace. Pour into mold, set into your freezer or refrigerator with no insulation around the mold. (yes, your soap will still saponify, albeit a slower rate, even in the freezer).

The Effect of Starting Temps when Soapmaking

Ungelled Moondance & Gelled Moondance

The pink bar of Moondance herbal soap on the Left below shows where only partial gel occurred in the mold. The upper edge and the rounded right upper corner is more opaque than the lower portion of the soap. The pink bar of Moondance herbal soap on the Right below shows the same formula, same essential oils, duplicate batch made in similar mold. Full gel was achieved by soaping with higher oil and lye solution temps. No “rind effect” like seen on the bar to the Left. Notice that ungelled soap is more opaque than fully gelled soap. (the lower corners of our batches were rounded because this photo is from when we still used shower curtains cut to fit the mold as our liner, we did not get the perfect corners that the silicon lined molds in the photos give us now. The rounded corners were the lower portion of the mold where the liner did not get flush into the mold corners).

Ungelled Eucalyptus & Gelled Eucalyptus

This Eucalyptus herbal soap was made in two batches. Batch on the left did not go through gel stage. Batch on the Right went through full gel stage. Notice how you can use gel stage, or lack of gel stage, to obtain different soap effects. I like soaps with herbs in them to go through full gel stage. That way I can see “deeper” into the bar all the lovely herbs that were added to the batch.

Ungelled Goat milk soap on Left

Both of these batches, Unscented Goat Milk on the Left and Unscented Pumpkin Illipe on the Right are both made with the Low Temp or ungelled soap method. We have beautifully white soap in both instances by making a very concentrated solution of the powdered goat milk, making it thick like cream (small portion of our water weight for this batch mixed up with the amount of Goat Milk powder to have made goat milk out of the full weight of water required for this batch). The Pumpkin Illipe soap is naturally a pretty ivory shade, it is here to show you the level of discoloration the Goat Milk soap is when using very low soapmaking temperatures.

The Discounted Water Cold Process soap making method is frequently referred to simply as DWCP.

Most soap formulations give you a lye weight, and that is a hard and fast, unchanged amount based on the type and quantity of oils your formulation is using. Each time you change the amount of the oils, and often even the variety of oils, it will change that calculated lye figure for making a batch of soap with say a 5% excess oils, or superfat level. More accurately, we refer to the superfat as a “Lye Discount” (resulting in excess oils, or ’superfat’). Do not confuse lye discount with water discount. Lye discount controls your superfat, water discount controls your lye concentration levels. In DWCP you are reducing your water and created a water discount.

Now, you can’t just dump dry lye into the oils and get soap…right? You need a solvent to dissolve the lye and allow it to actually react with the oils. Water is the best solvent in this case. Water ends up being the ONLY ‘unchanged’ element of your soap ingredients (oils, lye, water).  Your oils mixed with the dissolved lye in water, will saponify. Acidic oil molecules combine with alkaline lye molecules, changing into soap. The glycerin attached to your oil molecules (triGLYCERIDES) is cast off and remains in your natural soap, while the water gets used up in the form of heat and evaporation.

So, you make a soap recipe that requires 6 oz of lye and 12 oz of water. That would be a 2:1 ratio.  2 parts water to 1 part lye. This is a fairly typical ‘water discount’ in soap making. Typical ratios of water to the specified formula lye weight requirement is usually about 2.5 - 2.0 : 1, with 2.5 - 2.0 being water, 1 being the lye. That translates to 15 oz water for 6 oz lye, or 12 oz water for 6 oz lye.

Now, with that much water, you have to let your bars sit and “cure” for several weeks to let the water evaporate out. That is the most time consuming part! But, since water is ONLY a solvent, not actually becoming part of the bar of soap, you can REDUCE the amount of water that you initially dissolve your lye in! It means LESS water to have to evaporate out of the bar latter, LESS soap bar shrinkage (were you wondering why your soap labels keep getting sloppy on your soap bars??), and faster sell dates. You will still find that a 2 week cure is needed, but you create a harder bar with less shrinkage, and faster processing when you discount your water.

So, now how do you actually SAFELY discount? First, remember… reducing the portion of water for the formula’s specified lye weight will cause your lye solution to be MUCH stronger, or more concentrated specifically. Concentrated lye solutions are much more dangerous to handle. Meaning less time to get any slopped lye splashes rinsed off and not burn you.  So safety equipment is important: GLOVES, GOGGLES or FACEMASK, apron, etc. If you have any reservations or small pets and children underfoot, just don’t do it.

Lets look at that 2.0 : 1 water to lye ratio above.  To ‘discount your water’ that you would leave the lye figure to what ever the formula or lye calculator says for your soap recipe that you are making. You would then change that WATER figure to say a 1.7, or 1.6 or maybe even 1.5  ratio instead of the 2.0 ratio to dissolve the lye in. 1.7 times your lye weight as your water discount is about a 36% discount, 1.6 is about a 35% discount, and 1.5 is a 40% discount. Your discounted water weight is easily calculated by multiplying the required lye weight with the ‘discount factor’, such as 1.9, or 1.8, or 1.7 or 1.6 or 1.5. Note how as you reduce your discount factor you get a more concentrated lye solution. At the bottom of the page there is a list of lye to water ‘discount’ ratios, in chart form also.

I do not recommend doing a deeper water discount than 1.5, due to the technical grade lye we use in soapmaking. That means there are a small amount of impurities and other types of ’salts’ in our lye. Those other things can change the solubility of the lye and water, altering the outcome of your batch because the physical solubility limit of pure lye in pure water is 50%.

If you discount water, just go slow, play safe, and take notes because each batch will be an experiment. Typically, concentrated lye solutions cause your soap batch to trace MUCH faster. So be prepared!  Have mold ready and waiting. Use a fragrance oil or essential oil that you KNOW does not accelerate or move quickly. The first time you use the DWCP method, use something you know actually regresses, like Lavender essential oil … it will buy you a little time the first time so your eyes don’t bug out as you race to get your soap in the mold!

Water Discount Ratios (multiply your lye weight by the ratio to calculate the amount of water weight you need)

Lye x 1.0 = 50%  (the physical limit for pure lye & pure water, and neither your lye or water are pure!)
Lye x 1.15 = 46.5%        For “extreme soapers”
Lye x 1.2 = 45.45%
Lye x 1.25 = 44.44%
Lye x 1.3 = 43%
Lye x 1.4 = 41.66%
Lye x 1.5 = 40%              For experienced DWCP soapmakers
Lye x 1.6 = 38%
Lye x 1.7 = 37%
Lye x 1.75 = 36%
Lye x 1.8 = 35.7%
Lye x 1.9 = 34.5%
Lye x 2 = 33%                 This is a good place to start
Lye x 2.1 = 32%
Lye x 2.3 = 30%

Crock Pot Hot Processed Soap colored & layered to look like Frosted Chocolate Cake

Until you are familiar with your crock pot, only fill it half full with total soap mixture. Your soap will rise and swell during the crock pot cooking process, and you want to have enough room to contain it all. Any crock pot will do, but I recommend one that will let you remove the liner, as it is much easer to clean. Crock Pot Soapmaking varies according to crock pots and heat settings, but you can estimate 30 - 45 minutes for a small batch cooked at high heat, to 3 hours for a large batch on lower heats.

So, lets get started!

1. First, plug your crock pot into an outlet and turn it on.

2.  Measure and mix your lye and water need for your soap recipe.   Set aside in a safe location.

3.  Measure solid oils and melt in your crock pot.

4.  Measure liquid oils and add to previously melted solid oils in your crock pot.

5.  Pour previously measured lye and water solution into your crock pot of melted soap oils, stirring constantly.

6. Using a stick blender, bring to trace.

7.  Cover crock pot with lid, and set to cook on the med setting. If your pot only has low and high, choose the high.

Now, you will be watching your crock pot as your soap mixture moves through various stages of cook.

Applesauce Stage: First, it will curl at the pot edges and have the appearance and texture similar to applesauce.  You will see this look move from the outer edge of the crock pot toward the center of the crock pot.

When the middle looks the same as the outer edges, it is ready to stir it all together.  You can use a stick blender, or you can simply stir with a heavy spoon. Now is the time to add any color or fragrance also.

Mashed Potatoes Stage: Your soap is ready to mold when it resembles dry, mashed potatoes . At this stage it dries quickly when you take a pea size of soap, let it cool down to handle, and then rub it between your fingers. This is fully saponified soap, and ready to mold!

Start glopping and plopping into your wooden mold. You will need to slam your mold down on a hard surface to make sure air pockets are not made by this mash potatoes textured soap mixture. If you colored different amounts of soap contrasting color, you can layer them for a neat ’swirled’ looking effect also. Let your mold cool completely before you cut & slice your soap. Crock Pot Hot Processed soap is completely saponified by the cooking, and can be used as soon as it is hard. A 1 - 2 week curing period will improve even hot processed soap by allowing residual water to evaporate, making harder bars that wear away slower.

NOTE: Adding 1 - 2 teaspoons of Sodium Lactate per lb of base oils mixture will allow for a soap mixture that is easier to handle and mold in the final ‘glop and plop’ stage.

This is the time of year that I used to finish tidying up my rose beds. I currently don’t have any roses to tend though, so thought I would simply share my tips with others that might be struggling to grow bumper crops of roses.

Click on the following link, it is a PDF with “Tips for Growing FANTASTIC Roses“, and I used to sell this information to other rosarians. Enjoy, and may your garden be a Bed of Roses.

PS. In case you would like to see my last rose garden, here is a link: Kelly Bloom’s Rose Garden

Carrots Huddling Together to Stay Warm During Snowy Winter 2010

Look what I found in my garden today! Brad & I did a garden clean up to prepare for our 2010 Spring Garden. In September I harvested the last of the carrots, except for some stray seedlings that had not grown due to my planting the carrots too close together. I thought for sure these little seedlings would die from no water, sweltering heat, and winter cold. Then we got gobsmacked with FOUR snowfalls this winter, which is highly irregular! In addition to these two carrots twining together to huddle for warmth, we also harvested another 5 lbs of carrots of varying sizes. Quite a February garden windfall.

I may have really goofed though. I forgot about the peppermint plant . . . ! If you know anything about mint, well lets just say it is very persistent! We probably pulled up two bushels of root runners, ;(  This of course does not bode well, or on the bright side, I may have enough mint next year to operate my own essential oil distillery. Keep me in your thoughts. Last year I thought it was the Heirloom Yellow Pear Tomatoes that were going to carry me away, this year it might be peppermint.

February Cleared Garden, Start of 2010

Ok, here is a peek of the freshly cleared winter garden. The tiller has at it next week, and then we will start on some spring peas, lettuces, more carrots, and since my son loves beets (I know, amazing huh?), plenty of those also. My husband forbid me planting any more radishes or swiss chard though. Darn, there goes my barter materials with my Korean hairdresser! She was great at making stuff with the overflow of chard. Oh, and Brad said only one Zucchini plant this year, not the six we planted last year. Our poor neighbors would see us walking over with a bulging grocery bag of arm length and thigh thick zucchini (what can I say… they just kept getting away from us!) and run the other way. I guess I should consider publishing the 1001 Ways to Use Too Much Zucchini Cookbook this year too!