Sibi
Well-Known Member
Just wanted to share with you all my test batch that amazingly went right, go figure. I was totally expecting something to go wrong and it didn't. My experiment - I was feeling lazy and didn't want to melt my hard oils so I thought, what if I just plop all my oils, soft and hard in a bowl and add the lye water right after mixing. Will that hot lye water be enough to melt the hard oils? Well, first of all some info: I used olive oil at 45%, coconut at 20%, Castor 10%, Shea butter 20% and Cocoa butter 5%. Everything went into the bowl as is except the cocoa butter, I grated that into the bowl. Then I added the lye water. I wisked the mixture for about 3-4 minutes at which point all the shea had finally melted. I then added oats, coloring, and honey and continued stirring until light trace at which point I added the fragrance. Then I continued mixing until almost medium trace and poured. Smooth as silk - no problems at all. I stuck them into the fridge because I didn't want them to gel. I left them in the mold for a couple of days because they are still a little soft but given the cure time of 4-6 weeks I think they'll be just fine. Here's the end result (The sprinkles on there are store bought sugary sprinkles for real cupcakes, don't think sugar will hurt ya when you're washing right?)