Cocoa and Shea butter % noob question :)

[Scotsoap]

Is there an optimum percentage of cocoa butter, shea butter etc to add to your soaps ? I'm thinking you could add too much and get a greasy bar ?

 

[Lane]

I use A LOT of Shea. And I have never had a greasy bar. Though, my cleansing numbers are around 22 to balance this out. Do you use SoapCalc at all?

 

[Scotsoap]

Thanks for your answer Lane , no I havent used Soapcalc yet - I have looked at it a lot But as I'm a noob I'm not sure quite where to start
As yet I am not conversant with say 'standard' percentages of oils for a good all round base soap. I have found a few recipes that look quite good to my inexperienced eye and wondered about adding cocoa or shea butters. And then you had to get all technical on me and start talking about cleansing numbers Hehehe no doubt one day all this will be second nature to me.

 

[IrishLass]

I've not used shea butter in my soap (yet), but I've gone as high as 35% with cocoa butter before and my soap was not greasy at all, just very hard. HTH!



IrishLass

 

[Scotsoap]

Thanks IrishLass that's very encouraging !

 

[NEASoapWorks]

It's O'shea!

I've used shea — but I've never used it alone. I do half shea, and half mango butters in my base recipe. It works out to 10% total. I like it.

I've used 10% cocoa butter.

 

[Lane]

*Small related hijack*

I have always wanted to use Cocoa butter but I've read you have to do all this "stuff" to it before you use it...like heat it up to like 145 and cook it and smooth it...Does anyone know what I am talking about? :?

 

[Scotsoap]

*Small related hijack*

I have always wanted to use Cocoa butter but I've read you have to do all this "stuff" to it before you use it...like heat it up to like 145 and cook it and smooth it...Does anyone know what I am talking about? :?

Yes, that's called 'tempering'. It's what chocolate makers do and I did read somewhere that you have to do that - BUT - I'm going to try it anyway without all that stuff I'll let you know the results !

 

[IrishLass]

*Small related hijack*

I have always wanted to use Cocoa butter but I've read you have to do all this "stuff" to it before you use it...like heat it up to like 145 and cook it and smooth it...Does anyone know what I am talking about? :?

Yes! What Scotsoap said.

I've noticed in some of my batches that have a higher percent of cocoa butter, that the cocoa butter re-hardened itself and it showed up as little white chunks in my soap. At first I though it might be lye (yikes!), but thankfully it turned out to be just cocoa butter. The wierd thing is that in some of my batches in which I was very consciencious of tempering the cocoa butter, it still rehardened into little chunks anyway, while some of my other batches (whether they were tempered or untempered) did not. Go figure! Soaping results have a habit of being consistantly inconsistant at times.

On the up-side, a wonderfully consistant thing I have noticed is that in one of my favorite recipes that calls for only 4% cocoa butter, I don't temper the cocoa butter (I just melt it as usual with my other fats until liquidy) and I've never gotten rehardened cocoa butter chunks in the finished soap. I make many batches of this particular recipe too. Yippie!

I guess you'll just have to experiment with tempering and not tempering and see how things turn out. Even if you do get little chunks, it's no biggie, at least from a non-aesthetic viewpoint. The soap is still fine and quite usable.


IrishLass

 

[Lane]

Thanks!!

 

[brian0523]

I do a short-cut tempering of butters in my BB creations. I just put the butter in a double-boiler, once the butter is melted, turn the dboiler down to your lowest setting, and let it go for 20 min. I don't ever monitor the temp during the 20 min. I've never, never, ever had any problems with any solids in my products.