Hot Process Soap Making Saves the Day

As I mentioned in yesterday's post, we've been making soap for many years using the cold process method of saponification.  You mix up your oils and lye and then pour it into a mold and let it cool slowly over a couple of days, then it finishes saponifying over the next few weeks.

I had heard about hot process soap making but never tried it before, so when I found Delores Boone's book Handcrafted Soap, which is all about hot process soap, I was excited to try it out.

It's easy.

EASY.

You make soap the regular way, then there are three options for heating for the final cooking:
1. Crock pot on LOW.
2. Stove top double boiler.  Temp should be high enough to maintain a slow boil of the surrounding water.
3. Oven on 180-200 degrees.

Decide what method you're going to use to heat the soap to cook it [above].    If you decide on methods 2. or 3. then use stainless steel or enamel pots.   Stainless steel is best.   Soap making is very hard on enamel pots. 

You can mix your lye and oils right in the pot you'll use to cook it in.  So nice!

Mix the oils and lye to trace [thick as gravy], add your color or botanicals.   Wait to add your scents until the end of cooking.   Put the soap in the heat source and check it every 15 minutes or so.  

1.  Crockpot: LOW.  1 hr. A large wave will start at the side and curl up toward the center.   When the wave has completely submerged the center 'island', the soap is done.   Shiny wet areas are glycerine.  You can stir it in.

2.  Double boiler:  Temp should be high enough to maintain a slow boil of the surrounding water.  45 minutes or so.  Stir every 15 minutes.   The outsides will start to curl in toward the center. When it looks translucent, but not wet after you stir it, it's done.   To make sure, carefully touch some of the soap on the spatula or spoon [It's HOT!] and rub it between your fingers.  It should not be gritty.  Keep cooking until it's smooth.

3.  Oven:  180-200 degrees.  30-40 minutes.  Check it every 20 minutes or so.   When the soap is translucent and wet looking on top [that's glycerine], the soap is done.

Once your soap is done cooking, you add the scents and stir and stir and stir to cool it down slowly.   Boone says to use a spatula and fold the soap over and over and over.   When everything is mixed up well, it will have the consistency of mashed potatoes and you can put it into molds to shape and to finish cooling.   

Once the soap is cool, you can use it right away.  

I had a bad batch of shortening that was making my soap do funny things and I used the hot process method as a way to save a batch of what had been going to be [past perfect future infinitive verb tense, in case you wondered] a simple cold process batch.   When the mix grained and went very thick immediately, I poured the whole batch into my slow cooker, turned it on LOW and used a hand blender to blend it until it looked smooth.  It was slow careful work.   Blend for a slow count of ten, then stir with the blender off for a bit so the motor didn't overheat.   As soon as the mixture looked smooth, I covered the crockpot and waited.   

Saved!  It totally worked!   The mix curled just like she said it would.   After an hour, it was done and we put in the scents and stirred and stirred.   When it was thick enough to spoon out like mashed potatoes, we put spoonfuls on freezer paper [shiny side up] like cookie dough and let it cool some.   When it was cool enough to handle, we put two of those 'cookies' together back to back and formed them into balls as well as we could. [Photo above!]  They're not beautiful, but they're fun and it saved the batch of soap.  K2 used the soap that night.   It's wonderful.  

This was a very fun way of making soap.  Perfect for last minute soap projects.  Instead of waiting weeks, you'll only need to wait a day to finish it.  We'll definitely do hot process soap again.

Soap Book Reviews

I've been making soap for years using a cold process method.  There were just a few books on the market when we started making soap but there are several new books out there now and I realized it was time to check them out.  So much fun to read through a pile of new soap books!  I liked these two the best.  Soap Crafting, and Handcrafted Soap. 

For those of you new to soap making, let me answer a couple of questions first.

'Melt and pour' is when you buy pre-made soap, usually clear glycerine soap, at your local craft store and then all you have to do is melt it, add some color and scent and pour it into fun molds.  Easy.   These books aren't about that.  They are about making cold process and hot process soap.

Hot process and cold process soap making start the same way:  with oils and lye.   You start by mixing the lye into water and cooling it to under 120 degrees.  You melt your oils together and cool them to the same temp as the lye solution.   Then you mix them together to make your soap mixture. 

Cold process is when you pour the new soap mixture into a mold and let it cure slowly on its own.   You can unmold it after a couple of days, but saponification occurs slowly over the next few weeks.

Hot process is when you pour the new soap mixture into a slow cooker or pot and heat it up to quickly finish the saponification process in an hour or so.  

Soap Crafting: Step-by-Step Techniques for Making 31 Unique Cold-Process Soaps is a new book on cold process soap making that takes you through the basics and then shows a bunch of beautiful techniques for how to mix colors and make your soaps fancier. It was written by Anne-Marie Faiola, the Soap Queen, who has a terrific blog and who owns Brambleberry, an excellent (if pricey) source for soapmaking supplies.  The book is clear, beautiful and excellent for beginning and intermediate soap makers.  There's a good list of ingredients and a troubleshooting section.  It's got a spiral binding that allows you to open the book and keep it open while you're working.  I love it!  I've put this book on my book widget [See BOOKS tab above], too, if you need to find it later.

The second book Handcrafted Soap is all about hot process soap making, something that I had never tried. This book is by Delores Boone, who has done a great job of introducing soapmaking for beginners who want to finish it quickly by heating it at the end. There's a good description of oils, the basic process and the finishing processes. A great book for people who want to use the hot process method. Only one problem. The book is now out of print and it is way too expensive. I include the link here only so you know what book I'm talking about and so you can keep your eye open for it at used book places. It's definitely worth a few bucks to put in your how-to library, but not more than that.  The process is EASY.   I tried it right away and will give you a report tomorrow.