Too Little Heat Too Much Heat

Do you know that some fragrance oils out there can be as moody as us the women?!  Seriously, no joke!

(Yes I admit, I can be moody, but I called that being sensitive, ha!)

The #1 most common moodiness from the fragrance oils we use to soap is acceleration of trace, worst case, soap on a stick, meaning once it hits the batter you can lift the whole "batter" up with your spatula!  This usually happens to heavy floral or spice noted fragrance oils.  We got so well trained by these we learn to go around it.

Today I want to talk about the more rare soaping fragrance moody behavior.  As a fragrance addict I "collect" well over (and ever growing) 100 different ones... yes I know, I need help...  Out of all I soaped with, I can count with one hand how many fragrance I have encountered with this rare naughty behavior.  The first common characteristic of these naughty fragrance oils is that they do not accelerate soap trace, in fact, some even slows it down.  So what curve ball do they throw at us?!  ASH INSIDE OUT!!!

No, it is not stearic spot, trust me, I made a big batch to split into 2 and poured into same mold with divider, this one got it, the other fragrance got absolutely NONE.

How about this one?  Oh gosh the ash is so evenly distributed, should I thank it or should I hate it?!  Let me show you more of the my earlier soap that did the exact same thing.  What do you think of this one?!  It was so bad on the top I had to chop the whole top off, but even that it was just way too ugly to sell.

 Or these?!

(I washed off the outer ash but the inside ash just wouldn't give)

After 3 years of soaping I finally had semi success in eliminating most of the ash.  I figure maybe it just need a little more heat, to speed up the saponification!

Hey, didn't I already mention before that no soap can ever defeat ME?!  I soaped that first blue soap again, this time I pre heated lowest setting of my oven before I soap then turned it off.  I did whatever doodad I usually do, sprayed rubbing alcohol on top a couple times, then popped it into the warm oven.  I'm guessing the temperature at that moment was probably somewhere around 140F or even less.  An hour latter I open the oven to check and it was perfectly fine, no gelling no nothing.  Total false sense of security!  I fell asleep for a quick weekend afternoon nap.  By the time I got up, the soap was already cooling down and a couple big cracks showed up on the top.

!@#&*)*^%$)^_#&(_*^(&%!!!

I'm pretty sure it wasn't that hot in the oven or else my blue colored sugar crystal would have melted or my plexiglass mold would have deformed.  But that cracks were obviously caused by over heating.  How can soap over heat when it didn't even go through gelling?!

Well, at least this time there's no ash inside!  I can live with that, embrace the cracks!  Yes, cracking top was totally my design intention can't you tell?!  LOL