Does this look right?

1233

I've had soap look similar in the mold and it turn out just fine. I would keep a eye on it for separation or overheating, just in case.

If it goes through gel phase, it should settle down just a bit.

Even if it doesn't, it's going to be a sculpted top, tri-color, very pretty soap!

mrsbrightside said:

Thank you guys so much. Ya'll's replies put me more at ease. I did put a piece of cardboard on top and a towel for gel, but I'm literally checking it every 5 min haha. I sprayed the top with alcohol and that combined with the FO's kinda makes me gag, but so far no signs of overheating. Not the prettiest, but I'm pleased for my first time.
Is there anyway though to not get that texture again? Do I need to go easier on the stick blender?

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Go easier on the stick blender and start coloring when it reaches full emulsion or extremely light trace. When I start getting close, I switch to hand stirring and glide it in to lightest possible trace.

If you discounted the water, discount it less the next time to slow down the recipe a little bit. And if your FO accelerated that, add it to the oils to slow things down just a touch.

mrsbrightside said:

I was worried I was having a false trace. I didn't see any oils ontop of my batter, but it just took a couple blasts with the stick blender and it looked emulsified...

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It would depend on your recipe. Something with a lot of hard oils could certainly do that.

Most of mine are 75% olive oil and take fifteen minutes to trace even with the stick blender, but my gardener's soap (half coconut) traces so fast you have to move quickly.

of course then I had to give it a few more blasts just to make sure...that's probably where I messed up.
Where I did three separate FO's I couldn't add them all to the oil mixture.
And I've read about water discount but I'll have to read up on it more bc I don't get it. I just used the numbers soap calc gave me-which were tricky getting some of them right on my scale-which I don't trust 100% in the first place, so some of those oils might have been off a point...

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If your scale measures in grams, use that. If not, the smaller Escali scales are quite inexpensive. The one I have measures grams and will measure up to 11 pounds--more than sufficient for oils and for the pot itself.

Water discounting is just raising or lowering your amount of water to account for how fast the recipe traces (and lower water amounts tend not to gel phase, plus lose less weight during curing).

Normal SoapCalc water seems to be 38% (which I find high for many recipes, but it depends). I'll go down to 25% on some slow tracing ones like high olive oil. Most of us ignore that setting and use lye concentration or water:lye ratio instead. Anything from 2:1 (about 27% water for most recipes) to 2.8:1 (about 38%) is pretty reasonable and not a severe discount.

You can certainly go under 2:1, even as low as 1:1, but the lye solution is much more concentrated, more dangerous to handle, lye volcanoes become more likely, and the recipe will trace much faster.

Yes, palm is considered a hard oil. It stays solid at room temp in all but very hot seasons/places.

Looks good

I love the effect! Way to go