When to add shea & cocoa butter

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kommon_sense

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I'm planning on making my first batch of shea/cocoa butter soap. However I'm not sure of when to add them?

I have a brick of shea butter, and chunks of unrefined cocoa butter.

Do they get added at the start of the process with the other oils (coconut/palm/etc.) and melted with them? Do they get added at trace?

Does the cocoa butter need to be tempered? Can the unrefined chunk be grated & mixed in at trace since mixture temp should be about the temp you would want to temper the cocoa butter at?

If I temper the whole batch of cocoa butter seperately would I just need to warm it up for use in future batches?

Any info is appreciated.
 
Melt them down with the rest of your oils. Because its soap you don't need to worry about tempering the way you do with lotions & creams...
 
I third that I melt all hard oils together and than add liq oils I see no point to waiting till trace lye monster chomps through them any way.
 
Thanks for the feedback! I actually ended up learning how to temper it as I made a batch of body butter for my g/f today. She seems excited about it. I went the alton brown method for tempering it. Just placed a bowl on a heating pad.

I'll be building a nicer soap mold in the next few days and we will see how this batch of shea/cocoa butter soap goes :)
 
i just melt all oils in crock(cp or hp) and dont add any at trace, heard it doesnt do anything? I use cocoa and shea, it is awesome, although I only use a3 ounces of each to a 2 lb batch, otherwise the bubbles goes way down, i do always use castor too. have fun.
 
hmm.. Thanks for mentioning the castor. I just found it locally yesterday. I'm going to have to play with the recipe a bit to get the castor in there.
 
I find that adding even only 2 or 3% castor boosts the fluffy lather and moisturising feel, so working that amount into your recipe will be easy peasy! Have fun with it :D

Tanya :)
 

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