Made some poop soap, on accident

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KatieShephard

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Yes, you read that right. I made soap that my kids have named "poop soap". It was supposed to be chocolate soap, but things went terriblly wrong. Let me explain.

First, this was my 2nd batch of soap ever. I was very excited that I was going to make some chocolate soap (I'm a huge chocolate lover). The plan was to put a larger quantity of cocoa butter in it and some cocoa powder in at trace.

Here's the recipe by %:
Cocoa Butter 25
coconut 25
Shea 5
Palm 25
Soybeen 15
Castor 5

Then I got to watching youtube and got the brilliant idea of steeping my chocolate flavored tea, which my mother gave me and I didn't quite like, and adding it into my lye instead of the usual water. People on youtube did this with coffee, so I figured this would just add to the chocolatey goodness. Wrong!

I did it CP, adding the lye to the chocolate tea...then adding the lye water to my oils...then adding the cocoa powder at trace. It all smelled a little funny, but I soldiered on. Left the loaf out overnight and went to cut it almost a full 24 hours later.

I took it out of the mold and it leaked! And it stunk like ammonia! Horrible! A few hours on youtube later and I was cutting it all up and putting it in the crock pot to rebatch it, liquid ooze and all (at least what was left). First time rebatching and I added way too much water...as it never got melt-y. Remolded it...left it for 2 days...unmolded it and cut it.

It's now really dark brown, soft, and still stinks, but not like ammonia...just badly.

Any ideas on what went wrong? I'm thinking it was the tea. I did let it cool before I added the lye.

Here's some picture's...
the before

IMG_1561_zps35c5617c.jpg

IMG_1557_zpsdc072220.jpg
 
It looks like it overheated the first time. Not sure why it smelled like ammonia, did you add any dairy? I think the rebatch bars look ok, I have coffee soap that looks almost identical.
 
It looks like it overheated the first time. Not sure why it smelled like ammonia, did you add any dairy? I think the rebatch bars look ok, I have coffee soap that looks almost identical.

Thanks for the reply. I totally forgot, I did add 1 oz of heavy cream. And my cocoa was .5 cups. My total weight was 41oz, appx. Do you think that little amount would affect it?

The rebatch bars don't look bad... they just smell horrid!
 
Give it time, the scent will fade with a cure. Yes, just a little milk can cause a weird smell, especially if it overheats like yours did. I like to use vanilla to scent my funky, ugly brown rebatch.
Don't worry about the looks, one of my best soaps ever is a ugly brown rebatch. I'm down to the last bar and I need to figure out how to recreate it.
 
It probably just overheated. It's not unusual for soaps with milk to have a smell. Give them time for a cure and they should be fine. You may not get much smell from the cocoa or coffee after cure but it looks pretty good to me.
 
I really hope you guys are right! It would be a shame to throw them out because of all the good stuff in them. I'll let them cure and will check on them in a month. *fingers crossed*

In the future, should I refrigerate my loaf immediately after pouring? Would that have helped? My oils weren't that hot to begin with.
 
I wonder if there was something in that chocolate-flavored tea that acted up in the soap?

That is what I'm wondering too. The original ammonia scent was probably the heavy cream, but now that's gone and it still smells bad. I'll wait the 4-6 weeks and see if I'm still getting a bad smell...if so, then I think I'm going to have to name the chocolate tea as the culprit. The ingredients on it said "black tea and chocolate flavoring"...maybe the initial lye solution was just too hot for whatever the "flavoring" was. We shall see!

It's my own little science experiment :D

Out of curiosity, do you still get an ammonia smell with dairy if you do it HP? Or does that normally cook off?
 
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