Ahhh! Fresh Avocado Soap!

Fresh Avocado Soap

Thursday September 11, 2014

From the very beginning, back when all we wanted to do was make unique, handmade Christmas gifts, this book has been our quasi bible.  We love it, and honestly, we probably refer to it at least one time (or five) almost every time we make soap. 

 Soap Crafting by Anne Marie-Faiola is full of recipes, loads of color photographs, and goof proof instructions. She shows a variety of fancy (ish) techniques plus basic soaping step by step instructions, and did we mention tons of color photographs (which help tremendously). In short, if you want to try making soap, buy this book, you won't be sorry!  We aren't being asked to promote this product; we just like to share things that we think are helpful.

In addition to writing a great soap crafting book Ms. Faiola is the founder of a company that we buy lots of products from +Bramble Berry, she is known in the soaping world as Soap Queen and has her own Soap Queen TV www.soapqueentv.com.  If you read our blog you know one of our go-to places is her company Bramble Berry, the only negative (for us, on the east coast) is their location, WA state!  Even though their shipping is spot on, it still takes a little over a week to get product here, and we are impatient, darn it!

We love this book!

From the first time we flipped the pages and saw this picture of the layered avocado soap we wanted to make it.  Today we took the plunge.

The recipe for this soap is a little different from our "old faithful" recipe. To the usual coconut, olive, and palm oils, we added palm kernel flakes (have to be melted), and lots of avocado oil. There is no castor oil in this soap.  We decided not to add the silk today since we are following the recipe to the letter (or trying to).

The biggest deviation today was the scent.  The book calls for Wasabi fragrance oil, but we had none, so we went online and read all the reviews for wasabi. We kept reading fresh cut weeds, not floral, etc., so we started sniffing our sample bottles and came up with what we hope will be a good combination of three FOs.

From www.rusticescentuals.com we used Salty Sea Air (FO), described as "notes of crisp ozone, salty sea spray, seaweed, sun-weathered driftwood, and a hint of water lily."

Next, from www.fragrancebuddy.com Fresh Cut Grass (FO) which they describe as "sweet green odor just like a fresh cut lawn, works great by itself or mixer."

And the last one is from www.naturesgardencandles.com and is called Capri Olivo. They describe it as "a culturally complex aroma of tart Japanese grapefruit, fresh Osmanthus (sweet olive), and dew-covered watercress;  followed by middle notes of rose, jasmine and cassis. To create subtle ecstasy, Capri Olivo sits on a dry down of fresh amber and myrrh."

Seriously, with scents like that how can we go wrong?  (we'll find out soon enough)

The base or bottom layer of the soap will be a mixture of pure chrome green oxide mixed with safflower oil.

For the top layer of the soap we had to create our own version of yellow as what we had, Fizzy Lemonade, was way too bright and neon looking. We muted the brightness by adding half fizzy lemonade and half TD. That did the trick.

The middle layer of soap was an interesting mixture. First, we mixed part of the chrome green and part of the yellow mixtures together, then we added more yellow colorant.  You could say it was kind of a 2 parts yellow to 1 part green scenario.

After measuring and mixing we had the three colors ready for action.  We hope the photograph shows that the green on the L is the one diluted with yellow, and the one on the R is pure chrome green.

As we mentioned this recipe called for palm kernel flakes as well as palm oil,  here we show what they look like prior to melting.

And this, of course, is the avocado that gave up it's life for our soap; for that we are thankful.

We measured out 3 ounces of avocado, not much is it?

Added the chopped avocado to 3.8 ounces of distilled water and used the stick blender.

To mix it.......

To the consistency of.....

A thick avocado shake!

We had already added  the lye/water to the oils and mixed till we had a light trace, then we added in the avocado slurry.

The addition of the avocado didn't change the color of the 

soap batter too much, and it mixed in easily.

We divided the batter in the following manner:  4 cups, 4 cups and 2 cups.

This 4 cup batter got the solid green.

This 4 cup portion got the mixed yellow and green plus some

of the yellow.

We left the remaining 2 cups of batter in the original pot and added the yellow.

This is the darker green mixed into the batter.

This picture shows the difference in the greens. 

Normally, we add our fragrance oils before we divide the batter and add colorants, but as we were trying to follow the recipe as much as possible, we followed the directions and added the fragrance oil AFTER dividing and coloring the batter. 

At this point we added our combination of scents, dividing it among the three bowls of colored batter. You might have noticed that the pictures of the batter up to this point have shown a nice smooth batter. That is about to change.

RICING!!! oh no!

This is what ricing looks like. See all the little bumps in the 

formerly smooth batter? Um hm - ricing.  

Post Mortem on ricing problem:

We think that combining FO's from three different companies might be the problem. We checked the reviews and the data for all three scents and none stated ricing, so possibly mixing the three did it. We'll never know for sure without testing each of these fragrance oils separately. What IS for sure is that we won't mix these three again (even though it really IS a heavenly combination).

This is the lighter green batter.

We had just tried the stick blender to no avail.  

All of our research indicates that if ricing occurs, stick blending the batter will re-incorporate the ricing and repair the problem.  That did not work for us.  The batter became so thick that the stick blender could not blend it.

After stirring, and stirring and STIRRING, and using the spatula to mash and mash the batter against the side of the bowl, we decided to put the soap in the mold and let it do whatever it was going to do.

We didn't have the proper size mold to render 20 bars of soap (which is what the recipe said it would make), so we decided to use our new silicone molds that give us 10 bars each, yeah 10 + 10 = 20!!

The darker first layer is already in the mold, and
 I am starting on the lighter  (greenish yellow) middle layer.

That is the last of the yellow batter (we know, it looks white, but trust us, it is yellow). 

All it needs now is to be shaped into a mound on the top.

Mound building isn't for sissies; it's harder than it looks!

Once the soap was "properly" mounded to Kathy's aesthetic approval, we sprayed both with 91% alcohol.  Then per the recipe put them in the freezer for 12 hours.  "Are you nuts?" you might ask. Well, the recipe we are following gave a very good reason that actually made sense: keep the soap cold so the avocado does not turn brown.  Who amongst us hasn't had avocado that turned brown?  We didn't want that to happen to our soap.

Now for the fun...cleaning up!  No matter how hard we try, we seem to always make a mess.  Maybe as we become more experienced it will be better, but for today - what a mess.

More of the mess

We had colorants slopped all over the counter.  Maybe if we put newspaper down we could just throw it out.  Hmmmm food for thought.

The stick blender was covered in green soap batter.  Remember when we said the batter was too thick to stir? It was also too thick to come off the blender.  We had to resort to blending dishwater to help cut through the soap batter!

So here are the two molds full of Fresh Avocado soap.  Yes, if you look closely enough you can see little ricing bumps.  We tried to smooth them out - we really did. They won't hurt anything or anybody, they just look a little strange.

Here is the side view of the soap in the mold.

We got the three colors right.  They look great in this photo!  Once we remove the soap from the mold on Friday, we will do a side by side comparison with the picture from the book. 

Or, maybe we won't...

**************************  

It's now Friday evening, Kathy removed the soap from the mold, and it looks fine.  There are a couple of things that need to be mentioned: 

1.  12 hours in the freezer would have meant taking it out at 1 AM.  (Kathy says, "Ok, I'm not perfect, I did remember to take it out at 6 AM this morning").  

2.  The soap "defrosted" all morning long, I tried unmolding it around 11:30 and the bottom felt a little mushy so back into the molds it went.  

3.  Took it out of the molds and cut it around 6:30 PM. It was still a bit mushy, but it was better than it was this morning.  I handled both batches very carefully.  

4.  While taking the "final" pictures, I noticed a slightly discolored area (circular in the lower center of each bar of soap, my guess is that it hasn't completed the initial 24 hour "hardness" cure yet and still is gelling. 

5.  Since spotting the discoloration the "final" pictures aren't final, we will wait a week and take another set and see if the discoloration disappears while the soap cures.

I have to say it smells great - fresh, crisp, and clean.  

It is not heavy or sweet at all.

Now I ask you, considering that we had to create our own yellow, divide the batch between two smaller molds, and wing it on the scent, don't you think ours looks pretty good?

This, again was our inspiration!

Fresh Avocado soap, will be ready to sell by October 23, 2014

 We will post additional pictures next week documenting the curing process 

and showing if the discoloration fades.