My Bastille with cocoa and milk

[Iluminameluna]

I'm looking for advice on how to incorporate the cocoa powder and the cinnamon I'm planning to use in this recipe. Also, why partially thaw the milk? I understood that it's better to add the lye to the frozen cubes. I'm confused .

350g batch

Castor 5%, 17.5g
CO76 10% 35
OO 30% 105
Palm 19% 66.5
Palm, hydrogenated 28 98%
Soybean 8% 28

Water (milk) 100g
Lye NaOH 50G
SF 5%

2 tsp cocoa powder, 1/2 tsp gd cinnamon dissolved in warm oil

Please let me know if there's more info needed to help me. TIA!!

 

[Dawni]

Also, why partially thaw the milk? I understood that it's better to add the lye to the frozen cubes. I'm confused .

There is some chemistry involved that I can't explain but just recently I tried adding lye flakes, very slowly, into frozen coconut milk cubes. First it went OK, but got not ok pretty quick...

If you wanna read the discussion it's here, but the end result was I had lye chunks in my cooked soap. I tried picking out those chunks but I threw out more than half that batch.

I'm assuming you're gonna CP? For your additives, if you're planning to color with them, add them to separated parts of your soap batter (1:1 or 2:1 etc.) after trace, in separate containers, and you can try swirls and layers. I've not done much CP so I'm sure you'll get much better advice from the others

 

[amd]

Do you have a source for this recipe? That might help us explain why the suggestion to partially thaw. Off the top of my head, the reasoning is probably to still work with cold milk with a "milk slushy" but still give the lye something to dissolve in. Personally, I don't add lye to frozen anything. If I'm working with a milk, I use it cold and add it to my oils, and dissolve my lye in an equal amount of water. I believe the process is explained better in the link that Dawni posted above.

Ground cinnamon is scratchy, just as a warning. If you're adding the cocoa and cinnamon to the entire soap, I would just mix it into my oils really well before adding lye.

 

[Iluminameluna]

@Dawni Yes, I'll be doing this by CP. I hadn't thought about separating the different additives but that's a great idea.

@amd the recipe is my own but the use of slushy vs frozen milk is something I've seen repeated several times in the forums by members who use milks in their recipes. My confusion came about because on Soaping101's videos, she uses frozen cubes of milks and it's her suggestion that it's better for preventing the scorching of the sugars.
In my defense, when I made my mango puree soap, I used the puree completely frozen, along with the seawater, to make my lye solution and had no issues with bits of solid lye.

I was going to make this soap tonight but I crashed after being awake almost 36 hrs and just woke up about an hr ago! It's now almost 1 a.m.and I don't want to wake the rest of my family. Hate insomnia.