Phase 3 Great Cakes Soap Challenge- AKA Don’t eat that!

this is continued from my first post (ever!)

So, before I move on to the third and final phase, I’ll just explain what I was going for.
You see, I recently started calling my soaps Red Velvet Soaps. Two years ago, I started getting into soaping in memory of my grandmother who loved soap and was a true southern belle (unlike me- I’m from NJ). And since Red Velvet Cake is a Southern dessert, and everyone says my soap bars ‘look edible’, and because my soaps are (usually) indulgent and luxurious, it all came together in that title.

I also recently decided that signing on for these challenges (after stalking for quite a while) would really help me grow as a soaper. And the day I finally (!) decided on the name Red Velvet, Amy Warden announced the theme of my first soap challenge, and it was…drumroll…mini desserts!!

So I did a red velvet theme, based on pictures like

(the picture is from Pinterest, but I’m new to Pinterest and I don’t yet know how to link/etc to the original pinner)

I also mulled over Amy’s directive about making something really deliciously edible-looking, and I asked myself what I consider most delicious-looking. I discovered that I instinctively skip the smoothed-out, super-gorgeously ornamented stuff, and opt for the more homemade, imperfect, but 100% edible stuff. So I decided to go with a red velvet, ‘homemade’-looking theme.

Back in my first post, I was describing the red rebatch nightmare. I realized this morning why that went down the way it did- I had used the last drops of a big batch of 50/50 premixed lye solution on that batch. I suspect that it was quite concentrated, and that the soap made with it came out extremely lye-heavy as a result. Hence, the shattered-ceramic-plate consistency.

But the rebatch eventually left me with something the consistency of cookie dough and I thought, okay. I can work with this.

The frosting though…as I said before, it became very, very hard as I wrestled with the red rebatch. I almost broke my frosting tip, and it became a block in the piping bag. This was not looking good.

So I put all the white frosting batch back on the fire and added alternating water and oil, stirring madly, for a really long time, until I ended up with the world’s first Cold Process Fondant!! It stayed pliable for days. The texture and smell reminded me a lot of Snow Paste.

There aren’t a lot of ‘process’ photos because I was too busy SWEATING from the red issues and the white issues, which made me completely change my design strategy on the fly. I couldn’t pour anything, or swirl anything, or drizzle anything, or PIPE anything, and none of it was behaving like soap…

Then, one thought saved me- I just decided to treat the soap like clay. Caustic, cantankerous, super-fast-hardening clay. And from there, I let go and let the good times roll.

I knew I only had one shot because I’m low on supplies and I live in Israel where my supply orders could easily take 6 weeks to arrive, so I have to be really careful with my usage. Plus, I knew this week would be super busy and I wouldn’t have time to try again. It was all or nothing!

This is what I came up with. Okay two disclaimers:

1-I am REALLY nervous about sharing these publicly because I babied them so much and because I’ve never shared pictures of my soap to anyone ever before. Somehow that’s scarier to me than sharing real soap with people in real life…

2-My camera is nearing retirement, and I have no idea how photo editing works, so the photos are old-school, but on the other hand what you see is what they look like.

Without further ado, I present you Red Velvet Mini Ice Cream, Red Velvet Mini Cookies, Red Velvet Mini Cream Cheese Frosting Brownies, and Red Velvet Petit Fours.

Everything you see is cold process soap, minus the sprinkles and the ice cream spoon and dish.

The food ingredients, which are in all of the soaps pictured, are milk, cocoa, and paprika.

Below is a cake ball before and after it was cut in half. I’m really happy with the texture. And I washed my hands with one of the halves the other day- that was a very eerie experience.

And here’s the one that didn’t make the cut (literally):

My internet filter is blocking my close up photos of the mini red velvet frosted brownies, so I’ll just tell you that thanks to the rebatch, they actually look crumbly and nutty in real life. So much so that my 3-year-old bit into one that I’d left out by mistake. He was confused but fine and I was so excited- he really thought it was real!

Thanks for visiting and a BIG thank you to Amy Warden, Soapmakingforum, Brambleberry, Nature’s Garden, and Kevin Dunn for all you’ve done to help me become a soapmaker. It’s not just about soap. Underneath it all is a great generosity of spirit, which is why I wanted to learn soaping in the first place.

Great Cakes Soap Challenge- Mini Dessert Soap AKA Don’t eat that!

Phase 1:

Some of my scribblings, based on Pinterest foods I wanted to emulate. The recipe on the right was for the frosting batch.

This is the end result (you’ll see closeups later)

 

 

About to add milk to the soap batter.

Paprika, FD&C red, and cocoa powder for colorants.

This was supposed to be the two halves of my macaroon.

Looks fine, right?

this looked promising, too…

I’ll be able to pop these right out, right?

I planned to cut squares and rectangles for petit fours, brownies, and cheesecakes, out of this.

first fail of the day- the rest of the fails are in phase 2 of this process.

Phase 2 (1.5 days later and with less pictures, since I was too busy panicking)

As promising as it looked, my red soap did NOT work out. I think that I was so busy planning the aesthetics that I forgot my basic common sense- I didn’t check if the lye temp was close to oil temp, I didn’t insulate…and who knows what else.

My gorgeous red loaf (for brownies, petit fours, and cheesecake) turned out purple in the middle, super ashy, and extremely brittle- it smashed like a ceramic plate after 1.5 days. This is the rebatch pot.

The bundt cakes looked like this when I tried slicing them. Again, it was like cutting ceramic and the red was purple inside. The marbled bundt had scary blackness inside. I didn’t rebatch these, just threw them away (and I never throw away soap).

My macaroon looked like a UFO and was so hard on the outside, that I couldn’t stipple or texture it at all. Fail.

So here’s the part with no pictures, because things really started heating up.

I thought that phase 2 would involve making a white batch and using it as drizzle for the bundt cakes, cream layers for petit fours, dip coating for petit fours and cake balls, cream cheese for the brownies, and whip for the macaroon, cheesecake, and ice cream. And popping out the mini molded soaps to use as embellishments.

The bundt cakes and the entire red batter were hard as ceramic and purple. The mini mold soaps were still mush. I put up the lye water for the frosting batch and set to work salvaging the red batch.

Rebatching the red soap was slow and difficult do to its extreme hardness. This pulled away my attention from the hard-oil-heavy white batch which I had blended to emulsion before checking on the red rebatch. I wrestled with the rebatch- coloring it, covering and uncovering it, blending it, re-coloring it several times since the color was disappearing in the heat, etc, etc. It was total soap on a stick no matter how much water and oil I added. I stopped when it was more or less the right color, with most of the big chunks out, and the consistency of cookie dough.

So when I turned back to the frosting batch, it was also completely hard. My stick blender was stuck inside (I had left it in there) and getting it out was almost like getting it out of the middle of a bar of soap.

But as soaping would have it, not all was lost. Stay tuned to see what I came up with.