New Batches

I will try to get some photos up of our first few batches. I must say, even in a few weeks, we have come a long way! A bit disappointed with the CP soap class that i took (with my lovely best friend Meghan!). It seems like we glazed over a few things and didn't learn about other things involved in the process at all. I have been doing a lot of reading over the last few weeks( soap making supplies are expensive! I didn't want to go into it making costly mistakes and having nice ingredients go to waste) and have learned all kinds of new techniques.

The first few batches we made were pretty horrendous! Looking back at them now they just look awful! I don't think we had been making large enough batches (our first few were only 1 pound batches) and we had been measuring our ingredients rather than weighing them. That was the method we had learned in our class. I later learned that measuring is not a good idea because there is too much room for error. The last thing you want is to end up with a lye heavy soap that is going to burn you! Measuring makes it too easy to wind up with more or less of an ingredient.

Once we got ourselves a kitchen scale and started tinkering with our own recipes, our batches turned out exponentially better!

This was the first batch i made after figuring out we should be weighing our ingredients. I made this one on my own because i wanted to try out the process. It was poured into a loaf pan that i had, it's slightly larger than the bars we make now. I scented this soap with watermelon and anise. I was surprised with this combination, it's very refreshing! This recipe uses coconut, olive, grapeseed and avocado oils, it also has shortening and lard in it (with a few lavender buds on top to spruce things up!). 

I would make this scent again, however i would make it stronger. This soap should be ready to go in a couple of weeks. I will admit i have been using a small piece by the bathroom sink and i really love it!