I've sold out of one batch of my new cold process soaps - yay!! The Lemon Cream was really popular it seems (but I've found that with citrus, everyone always loves them so much). For the previous Lemon Cream, I'd not added any "cream" element so I wanted to do it this time. And, because I'm greedy and always want more, more, more, I didn't just use single cream but double cream for this soap - the thinking being, one is good but double has to be twice as good, right?? (I think it could be called heavy cream in the US? The single cream might be called pouring cream?).
I used the same recipe I used for my Fresh Orange soap - Golden Olive Oil, Shea Butter, Cocoa Butter and lots of pure tussah silk. I blended Lemon fragrance oil with May Chang (or Litsea Cubeba) essential oil to give a good, strong, sherberty lemon fragrance that sticks (as we all know that Lemon essential oil sadly tends to disappear in cold process soaps).
I weighed the water portion out (subtracted my double cream amount) and added in my silk and then my lye. It was only a small amount of water so it was a rather strong lye solution. I allowed it to cool as I weighed out the oils and butters and allowed them to melt. I mixed my titanium dioxide with a little oil and kept that close by me (so I didn't forget it, we all know what that feels like!). And then I added some Lemon Mica to another container, mixed with a tinch of oil, ready for the traced soap.
I added my fragrance to my oils/butter mix and then added the lye (after checking the temps of course) and stick blended. I then added the titanium dioxide mix and stirred again. I had put my double cream in the freezer whilst I was working on the soap and then mixed it in. Hmmmm good idea or not? In hindsight, maybe not because my soap turned to soap in a bucket in seconds. I don't know if it was because of the level of fats in the cream or the fact that the cream was so cold compared to the rest of the mix that this happened? I have made this before and it kept nicely fluid so I'm still not sure. Any thoughts are very welcome!
So, I had to choose... keep it as a new look, soap in a bucket or hot process it. Whilst soap in a bucket might be an interesting design, I can't see it catching on so I decided to HP it .. out came the crockpot. I was a little annoyed, it wasn't what I wanted but I think it turned out really nicely. It smells lovely, a nicely tangy lemon and it feels great on the skin (double cream may not be the best thing to eat but by God, it's a great addition to a soap!).
So... here we go... Lemon Cream with fabulous oils and butters and real Irish dairy double cream in a zingy lemon fragrance ... ohhhh and I forget, it's all topped with my signature dusting of glitter:
Glittery tops
Rustic but beautiful
Top & Sides ... pretty!
A lovely wall of lemon soap
Side on view
More glistening tops
Lots of soap!
I really hope you've liked looking at this .. if you're interested in trying one out, they'll be available from 24 April on
http://www.soaperstar.com/.
