Nom de Plume

Although I’ve been lax in posting, I’ve found an all new one-pound wonder — and it fits perfectly into microwave-safe Chinese takeout boxes for molding. When done, simply unpeel the sides and slice. There’s a slight slant to the edges, but who cares? Not I — especially if it means not fussing with waxed paper and stuff.

The recipe is:

126 g oo
126 g palm
108 coil/pko

4.5 oz water
51 g lye (coil) / 50 g lye (pko)

Using this recipe, I’ve made a lovely carrot soap, replacing the water with carrot juice (half added to lye, half when mixing all ingredients) and adding cardamom and ginger essential oils.

Nicki gave us grapes from her garden before we left for Canada. There was no way we could eat them all, so I mushed them up and used the juice the same way. It was really cool; when I added the lye it hissed and fizzed, and turned a deep brown color. Alas, the soap itself crumbled when it came out of the mold. I think the sugar content was way too high.

The lavender batch turned out just fine.

Last night, I modified one pound wonder by replacing the oo with half almond oil and half safflower. Scented with a blackberry rose (dyptique type) FO, and added red sandalwood powder to the lye to make it purple.