Soap won't harden

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anna_wien

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Vienna, Austria
Hey nice people, I need your help!

On Sunday I made a batch (ca. 600 Grams) of cold process soap:

200g Margarine
120g Rapeseed Oil
80g Jojoba Oil
44g Lye
134g Water

After a LONG time it reached a light trace, I added 24 g of Perfume and put into the mold (silicone). Today I checked (it's been 4 days) and it has the consistency of cheesecake, maybe a little bit harder.
What do I do?
Thank you very much
Anna
 
May I ask where you got that recipe? It's quite unusual and to be perfectly honest, not very good!

I've never heard of someone using margarine in soapmaking. Its full of ingredients that could behave unpredictably in soap. Rapeseed oil is also generally not used in soap because it can go rancid quickly. Jojoba is also not typically used in high percentages because it's more of a wax than oil and can also behave strangely if too much is used.

What kind of fragrance did you use? In soapmaking we use pure soapsafe essential oils or soapsafe fragrance oils bought from soapmaking supply stores.

If you tell us what oils are available to you, we can help you make a much nicer recipe!

Do you have access to olive oil, coconut oil, palm oil, lard, tallow or castor oil? These are all excellent soapmaking oils when used in combination with eachother.

I don't have a definite answer on why your soap is soft, it could be the ingredients of the margarine, the "perfume" or something else entirely. Hopefully someone else can shed some light as well. :)
 
The short answer to your question is you used a really troublesome recipe. It has jojoba at about 20% of the fats and rapeseed/canola at about 30%. These ingredients in larger amounts like this are most likely the reason the soap is very soft.

I am very curious to know the source for this recipe or why you chose this particular blend of fats. If you designed it yourself, how did you calculate the weight of the NaOH needed? I don't see margarine listed on any of the soap calculators I am familiar with. Did you account for the fact that margarine is only 80% fat?
 
Hello, thank you for your answer!
I've been making soap for a couple of years, and I've always use oils and butters that are easy to find here in a supermarket - like coconut butter, shea butter and olive oil - with excellent results!
This time I wanted to try something different. Maybe too different ;)
The perfume I bought from a shop that sells soap-making supplies, I think that shouldn't be the problem.
Do you think I should throw everything away now or is there a way to make it better?

Thanks again
Anna

@DeeAnna Thank you for your answer, the lye calculator I used is the standard one here in German-speaking countries and it includes margarine: http://www.naturseife.com/seifenrechner/

I probably should have used a known recipe instead of coming up with something like that...
 
Thank you all for your answers.
I actually used margarine because a couple of months ago I used this recipe for coffee-soap: https://naturseife-und-kosmetik.de/kaffeeseife-selber-machen-naturseife-mit-kaffee/
And it was brilliant! I apologize to the ones who do not speak German, in the ingredients margarine is about 45% of the total fat.
Excited by the discovery of a new ingredient, I wanted to try it in another kind of soap...

It's clear though that something went wrong, and I would really appreciate if someone could tell me what to do with the batch of soft soap: wait longer, re-batch it, or throw it all away?

Thanks
Anna
 
in the ingredients margarine is about 45% of the total fat.
Excited by the discovery of a new ingredient, I wanted to try it in another kind of soap...

What are the ingredients in the margarine? I wonder if it is similar to our "vegetable shortening" here in the states. In any case, knowing what's in the margarine might help.
 
What are the ingredients in the margarine? I wonder if it is similar to our "vegetable shortening" here in the states. In any case, knowing what's in the margarine might help.

There you go: Ingredients: vegetable oil and fat (53% rapeseed and palm), water, whey, salt (0,3%), emulsifier, acidifier (citric acid).
 
I don't have a lot of experience to offer (unless you calculate by the amount of 'soap' that I've lost to inexperience :)), but I think maybe you should provide a full recipe you've used margarine in before that worked so that the more knowledgeable people here can compare and see why that one might have worked and this (new, different) one didn't.
 
I don't have a lot of experience to offer (unless you calculate by the amount of 'soap' that I've lost to inexperience :)), but I think maybe you should provide a full recipe you've used margarine in before that worked so that the more knowledgeable people here can compare and see why that one might have worked and this (new, different) one didn't.

Hi, I've provided that recipe for coffee-soap where I used margarine this morning, here it is again: https://naturseife-und-kosmetik.de/kaffeeseife-selber-machen-naturseife-mit-kaffee/
 
Well, for one thing, I spot water in the margarine, which you may not have discounted from your main recipe.

For another thing, this recipe you made today contain some coconut oil (a hard oil), which you don't have any of in your new recipe. If this is indeed the only problem, then I think you only have to treat it like a recipe high in soft oils---wait and wait and wait for it to harden!

Here's that recipe, for others, who might want to see it:



  • 400g plant margarine
  • 250g of coconut oil
  • 350g rapeseed oil
  • Please calculate the NaOH amount yourself
  • 310g strong coffee (cold)
  • 5 tablespoons of coffee powder
 
I think the problem is the high amount of rapeseed oil. There is already 53% of Rapeseed oil in the plant margarine. Which means the total percentage of Rapeseed oil in your recipe is like 56%. That is going to make a pretty soft soap that will take awhile to harden. It will, because I have used Rapeseed at 50% before, you will need to be patient though. Very very patient. I would not make that recipe again even though I love Rapeseed/Canola but not at 50%. I love my hard oils too much.
 
Do you have a recommended fragrance that goes well with this recipe?
At the moment I have Rose and Violet (Veilchen) at hand, could I safely use one of them?
 
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