How to get the perfect chocolate bar color ?

[Oxbow]

Hello,
I am struggling to get a nice chocolate color.

I have :
- cocoa powder
- cinnamon
- molasse
- coffee powder
- brown-red mica but all the micas I find don't have the good color (and I want to use stuff I can buy at the store)

Cocoa powder gives a perfect chocolate color at trace, but after the saponification it turns lighter (it's also inside, not just the ash)
I don't know how to dose the other ingredients. I guess I will have to make a lot of trials.
Has anybody succeed that ?

Also, when to add the above ingredients ?

coffee powder should be added to the lye, what about the others ? I add them at the end (at trace)

Thanks

 

[kaygrrl]

I understand you can try actual coffee (cooled, of course) made in distilled water to which you add your lye! I don’t know if it fades with time.

 

[bookreader451]

Try a FO that goes a dark brown. Most of the chocolate scents will. Just an example below Chocolate Fudge Fragrance Oil

 

[ResolvableOwl]

Why wouldn't people just use (dark) chocolate itself for their chocolate soaps? In the end, cocoa butter is a beneficial soap ingredient, sugar (in moderation) as well, and you wouldn't have to whisk dusty cocoa powder.

So thought I, and simply tried what would happen. 40%ppo of a dark chocolate (70% cocoa, makes 12%ppo cocoa solids) melted into the oils. Upon addition of lye, the batter turned into a neutral black and smelled odd. After curing, the soap has kept its black colour, it lathers heavenly (that 8% castor and 23% babaçu are definitely helping with that), the froth has a faint, pleasant chocolate smell (no FO involved!) and a caramel-brownish colour. The only thing that had a remotely chocolatey appearance was the soda ash…

Would do again? 8/10 yes, but with a sliiiightly lower dosage next time (-:

Edit: Of course someone has done it before: Anne L. Watson has had some words on it. Her picture is so close to mine that I don't bother make an own photograph.

 

[Zing]

The browns in the 2 soaps were made with cocoa powder. Keep us posted!

 

[Jersey Girl]

Hello,
I am struggling to get a nice chocolate color.

I have :
- cocoa powder
- cinnamon
- molasse
- coffee powder
- brown-red mica but all the micas I find don't have the good color (and I want to use stuff I can buy at the store)

Cocoa powder gives a perfect chocolate color at trace, but after the saponification it turns lighter (it's also inside, not just the ash)
I don't know how to dose the other ingredients. I guess I will have to make a lot of trials.
Has anybody succeed that ?

Also, when to add the above ingredients ?

coffee powder should be added to the lye, what about the others ? I add them at the end (at trace)

Thanks

The bottom layer of this soap is using cocoa powder. Just use a little more and you should be able to get a nice chocolate color.

 

[violets2217]

I used brewed coffee as water replacement, ground coffee and dark cocoa powder for these Salt bars... they came out a pretty cool brown....

They were made in November and even seem a little darker now.

 

[Oxbow]

@Jersey Girl nice ! So yeah I will stick with cocoa powder, and add also a bit of real chocolate, because it's basically cocoa butter (a great fat for soaps), sugar (a good addition for the latter) and cocoa powder (the best chocolate pigment).

 

[Misschief]

This batch was coloured with unsweetened baking chocolate (one cube in a 1000 gm batch); the darker layer has added Dutch Processed cocoa powder.

 

[TheGecko]

brown-red mica but all the micas I find don't have the good color (and I want to use stuff I can buy at the store)

Not a good idea since not all micas sold in stores are safe for use in bath and body products. And even if they are 'skin safe', what works with Melt & Pour or Bath Bombs will not work with CP/HP Soap.

 

[KimW]

Ohhhhhh - maybe the next soap challenge should be CHOCOLATE!!!!!!!! Where's that chocolate fountain gif, @Zing ?!!

 

[glendam]

I was able to get a nice chocolate color soap dough by accident. I had used cocoa powder and like you said, it looked dark at first but after saponification it lightened up. I added brown oxide pigment to that (after the soap dough was done) and it seemed to work. So, potentially you could combine both colorants, perhaps? I explain this at the beginning of this video, so you can see what shade of brown I am talking about:

 

[Louise Taylor]

This was made with cocoa powder. It stays a nice dark choc brown,

 

[Zing]

@KimW, you mean this one?!
And here's vote 2 for a chocolate theme for a monthly challenge!

 

[Arimara]

Why wouldn't people just use (dark) chocolate itself for their chocolate soaps? In the end, cocoa butter is a beneficial soap ingredient, sugar (in moderation) as well, and you wouldn't have to whisk dusty cocoa powder.

So thought I, and simply tried what would happen. 40%ppo of a dark chocolate (60% cocoa) melted into the oils. Upon addition of lye, the batter turned into a neutral black and smelled odd. After curing, the soap has kept its black colour, it lathers heavenly (that 8% castor and 23% babaçu are definitely helping with that), the froth has a faint, pleasant chocolate smell (no FO involved!) and a caramel-brownish colour. The only thing that had a remotely chocolatey appearance was the soda ash…

Would do again? 8/10 yes, but with a sliiiightly lower dosage next time (-:

I am NOT using chocolate that way. NEVER. I will eat that chocolate and enjoy it properly. I'm glad it worked for you and pleas keep in mind that the color you saw came from the sugars in that chocolate but, chocolate is one of my happy foods.

 

[ResolvableOwl]

@Arimara You're soooo right! That bar of chocolate did only make it into the soap because I bought another two to distract me from the one for the soap… Joke aside, I didn't think about the sugar, you may be right about the colour. I happen to have a 100% chocolate at hand by accident (well, a friend bought it out of curiosity, she didn't like it and gave it to me, since she knows that I'm into advanced chcolate trickery)

the darker layer has added Dutch Processed cocoa powder.

Well, concentrated lye is kind of the “perversion” of the Dutch process (alkalising), that is industrially used to darken cocoa powder. But usually much milder than with soapmaking, since it is reportedly detrimental to antioxidants, complexity of taste and other organoleptic properties, not only if overdone. For chocolate, I'd prefer naturally acidic cocoa at any time over Dutched cocoa (it's a pity they don't have to report it on the labels), but for soap I have no choice (except maybe for HP late superfat).



Regarding the challenge: YESYESYES, but please at least wait until March with it, so that I can participate

 

[ResolvableOwl]

UPDATE: I couldn't resist, and made a little M&P test batch regarding cocoa colour. This is neutral M&P base plus 10% non-Dutched low-fat cocoa powder, equal to about 23%ppo cocoa solids, and lifting superfat by 4%.

I sacrified a bit of my favourite cocoa powder (see the heap for its original colour). It comes with a complex, slightly acidic taste and adds depth to hot (drinking) chocolate, chocolate bars, and baking recipes. Yet it has little colour strength by itself, and its clumpiness is really annoying. In the naturally alkaline soap matrix, however, those 10% of it immediately turn darker than it ever would when making chocolate out of it (mixing it into cocoa butter at 50% or 60%).
Upon using, little difference to the pure M&P soap base. The soap rubs dark brown on the skin, and smells like (Dutched) cocoa. Lather is bit nearly as intensely brown as it is with my CP chocolate soap. I'll leave them as is for a few days and report back if something changed.

tl;dr: Under mild conditions, some brown and “chocolatey” colour of cocoa solids is preserved, it won't “burn” (turn black) as direct contact with caustic lye would.

Now I just have to remind myself that those “chocolate bars” are NOT EDIBLE!!!

 

[penelopejane]

When you get a V dark chocolate brown soap with cocoa and/or coffee it will bleed brown liquid and suds. Dark brown soap isn’t attractive to me, sorry. But chocolate...yum.

 

[Arimara]

@ResolvableOwl Yeah, chocolate and cocoa powder have been banned from my soaps personally because I don't want to discolor the tub again. Cocoa powder added after trace will give a nice brown color but I haven't tried other extraction methods with it.

 

[amd]

you mean this one?!
And here's vote 2 for a chocolate theme for a monthly challenge!

Ahem, Mr. Zing, where were you last week when I needed this chocolate fountain? Also, I will stick the chocolate theme in my files for challenge ideas.

For the OP: I use the purest chocolate bar I can find without a ton of additives - usually Lindt 97%. I melt 1oz PPO and add to my soap batter at emulsion and stickblend to trace. You can see it here https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct...=5L1CcryoMbk&usg=AOvVaw0m8wPa3gHjIoSCfcq2aiq3
In this particular soap I actually used 1/2oz PPO (or a bit less) because I was using a discoloring FO. I also use melted cocoa with a good brown mica (I love Micas and More Shimmer Brown) when using a well behaved FO.