Recently spin swirl has become the newest trend soapers have been trying to achieve. What's spin swirl? Literally it means spinning your soap mold to create a pattern using that centripetal force from spinning. It might sound simple and easy but guess how many times I failed? 4 times…
1st try, forget it, soap got thick so texture top it is, sigh.
1st try, forget it, soap got thick so texture top it is, sigh.
2nd time you would think I learned from the lesson, but no~ I tried a new fragrance and it didn't behave the way I want it… sigh. At least it smells great!
3rd time is the charm, right?! You can tell the soap batter did stay more liquid, but not long enough for me to finish the funnel pour and perform the final spinning.
I should have given up at this point but I got stubborn! I gave it my final shot! …well, conclusion is, spin swirl is not cut for me...
The problem is the consistency of the soap batter, I know how to make thinner batter that lasts longer, by using high olive oil recipe and lower lye solution concentration. Despite the proven fact that high olive oil recipe produces milder soap when cured correctly, It's personal taste that I dislike high olive oil soap, it has this slimy feel when washing and it produces creamy lather rather than fluffy suds. The only high olive oil soap I make is my facial Dead Sea mud egg soap because fluffy lather is not desired for facial soap, that has 72% olive oil. If what it takes to achieve this spin swirl is to use high olive oil in my recipe I think I would cross that one out of my list unfortunately.
Still lovely soaps! :)
ReplyDeleteI think the original batter was 50 lard, 20 CO, 5 Castor and 25 olive - lard providing the slow moving batter. For my first attempt I used 25 tallow and 25 lard, rest the same.
It stayed fluid enough, but my swirls looked they were electrocuted. (not smooth at all) LOL
So if you're not against animal fats, a 5th attempt is waiting for you ....
I'll give it another go, but I think that there are other swirling methods with comparable results. :)
Your spin swirl turned out great. These soaps are beautiful =)
ReplyDeleteI hate olive soaps too.. But you can achieve a very slow moving recipe with other oils. For example thistle, or ricebran, or apricot kernel, etc. I use 35% coco+5% cocao, and then 65% slow oils when I need very thin traces. The soap foams immediately!
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