Pumpkin Biscotti Melt & Pour Soap

 

If you crave all things Pumpkin this time of year, this is a fast way to whip up a batch of pumpkin soap without making a batch from scratch (see post below). You could even make this with kids. I've melted 1.5 lbs of goat milk melt & pour in one container and 1/2 lb of honey glycerin melt & pour in another container. To the goat milk soap I added 1 tsp each of Pumpkin Crunch Cake fragrance oil & Biscotti fragrance oil. To the honey soap I added a pinch of bronze mica. I had already placed my Paisley Tray mold in a cookie sheet of ice water. I dumped the melted & fragranced goat milk soap into the mold and then poured in the melted honey soap. What you see above is what I got, it smells so good but still needs some trimming. Thanks for looking & happy fall!

Pumpkin Soap 2014

(Yikes, this closeup shows little white bits where the Titanium Dioxide didn't blend, it doesn't show so much in real life, I think I enhanced it when I was editing the photo:)

 



Recipe for a 3lb batch:

300 grams Coconut Oil

298 grams Palm Oil

385 grams Olive Oil

60 grams Pumpkinseed Oil

152 grams Sodium Hydroxide

300 grams Distilled Water

70 grams Pumpkin Puree (Canned Pumpkin)

30 grams of Cream or 1/2 & 1/2

 

The 1st four items are the oil portion of your soap. Get the lye/water portion ready first by adding the lye to the water and setting it aside to cool. While that is cooling gently melt your solid oils and add the liquids, and blend the pumpkin & cream together in a small container, I use glass because I warm it a little in the microwave. I tried to work at around 90 degrees ( pumpkin tends to create a lot of heat), so once everything has cooled to around there, heat your pumpkin mixture a little and then add the lye mixture and the pumpkin mixture to your oils and blend to trace.

 

Optional: I used 4 tsp of Pumpkin Crunch Cake fragrance plus 1 tsp of Clove essential oil for fragrance. This was added at trace and didn't seem to accelerate the trace or cause any extra heat. However, after the soap was in the mold for 45 minutes ,I felt the outside of the mold and it was hot. I popped it in the fridge for an hour and then took it back out. I wasn't worried about gelling , I didn't want the top to crack!

 

Also Optional: I usually don't colour my pumpkin soap but I wanted to do a bit of a top layer and was wanting contrast so I removed about a cup of soap and lightened it with some Titanium Dioxide and to the remaining soap I added a pinch of bronze mica.

 

You can see in the pictures that I poured the large amount of soap into my mold and then carefully added the lighter soap. I did a teeny bit of swirling with a coat hanger, still practicing that technique.

 

There's a picture below of a Pumpkin soap without any colour or layering and a slightly different recipe linked here. You don't need Pumpkinseed oil for this one and the batch is around 4lb.

 



Licorice Swirl

 Here's another hanger swirl soap and as I mentioned in a previous post, I decided not to go back and forth with the hanger on this soap. The last two I had swirled across and back and was curious to know how it would look if I just took the hanger across once, and I really like it. I was originally going to have only one layer of black soap but I coloured too much of the soap so ended up with two.  The white soap has titanium dioxide and poppy seeds and the black soap is coloured with some black oxide (mixed with almond oil) and bit of silver/grey mica. Of course, the Licorice scent comes from Aniseed Essential Oil, yum.

 Here's the top, I should have sprinkled on some extra poppy seeds.

The recipe I used and one of my other swirl soaps are here. Thanks for looking!



Lemon Biscotti Soap

 Here's the Lemon Biscotti Melt & Pour soap I was going to make for the last newsletter. I got one made and then decided to do another. For a 2lb tray  mold I used 1lb each of Goat Milk and Yellow Glycerin melt and pour soap, I melted both soaps together. Once melted I stirred in a pinch of bronze mica and 1 Tsp each of Lemon Essential Oil and Biscotti Fragrance oil. The pictures are pretty plain, I just wanted to show how the bronze mica tones down the bright yellow. The soap above is done in the OpArt tray mold. The one below was done in the Paisley tray mold. Tip: If you have trouble getting the mica to mix nicely, spray it with a little rubbing alcohol.

 Soapy group shot below, don't know why the colour looks so different, it stays the same when you cut it. The above photos are more true to life. Thanks for looking!

Teak & Sandalwood with Patchouli Hanger Swirl

Had to try the hanger swirl again just to make sure I had it down, please see the post below for recipe and details. This soap is fragranced with a new scent we are carrying called Teak & Sandalwood. I also added a bit of Patchouli essential oil, and the micas I used were Cappucino and Bronze. For this soap and the last one I moved the hanger up and down through the soap across and back. Next time I am just going to go across once and see what a difference it makes. Thanks for stopping by.