I guess I thought I was "Invincible Soaper!" Not!
A few days ago I made a new batch of cupcake soaps... honey oatmeal... they're beauties, but they're still not "frosted."
We received a few bottles of red wine for our wedding... one of which we don't care for so I've been using it in cooking and stuff... so I got the grand idea of making whipped soap frosting with it... didn't work this time...
I've read that red wine soap is good stuff... good for the skin so... I boiled a bit of it to removed the alcohol... dissolved my lye in half the amount of water I planned to use and was gonna use the wine for the remainder of my liquid...
OK... whipped up my oils... nice! That part was nice and fluffy and looking like it ought to... I added the wine to the chilled lye/water mixture... seemed to be OK... browned a little bit... I was hoping for a purplish or pinkish color to the final soap...
Added the lye/water/wine mixture to the oils and started whipping... it deflated, turned a pinky-gray-tan color (not attractive!) ... couldn't get it to fluff back up... it was more like pudding... would NOT hold shape enough to pipe onto the "cupcakes." My feelings deflated right along with my soap!
So... I added some lavender essential oil and spooned the pudding-like tan/gray/pink mixture into my silicon heart molds... the color has lightened up a bit so it's not so ugly... it's not great but not ugly and it's hardening into soap nicely... not sure what I'll do with it, just use it up I s'pose...
It's hard on a soapmaker's ego when this happens even though it does happen from time to time... for whatever reason... this time I'm wondering if the alcohol had something to do with the deflation... maybe I didn't get it all boiled out... maybe when I added the wine to the lye/water mix... it heated up some more... that could account for it... whipped soap needs chilled or at least room temperature lye mixture... maybe the high sugar content in wine did it... I don't know... but I still don't have frosting on my cupcakes!
Ah well... clean up the mess and try again... that's all that can be done!
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