Christmas in March

I've been buying a bunch of things online recently and two of my packages arrived today.  The first was from Brambleberry and contained the thing I needed to make soaps for my sister's baby shower.  I plan on making oatmeal milk and honey bars to give as favors.  Since shipping is pretty pricey, I threw in some other items as well, to make it more worth it (I think that's how they get you to buy more stuff!).  All in all, in addition to the fragrance I needed, I also got three 3oz size lotion dispensers (will be useful for traveling), some crushed walnut shells and apricot seeds to try out as exfoliants and a lavender fragrance oil.  Brambleberry also included a sample scent, wakeup rosemary.

My second package was from Vanilla Products USA (ebay store).  I found out about them through the simple dollar's homemade gift series and it was also through this that I became interested in making soap.  But I digress.  I wasn't interested in buying vanilla in bulk until I bought a replacement ice cream maker (which will arrive tomorrow).  Suddenly though, the idea of fresh vanilla ice cream (my favorite flavor) could not be resisted, but my thrifty nature balked at paying the exorbitant prices they charge in the supermarkets for beans.  So I recalled this post and ended up buying 1/2 pound of Gourmet A Madagascar Bourbon Vanilla Beans for $26 + $5 shipping.  Vanilla Products also threw in a free pack containing 1/4 pound of Grade A Tahitian Vanilla Beans.  So how many beans did I get?  

Here we have the Madagascar beans.  The color here is not quite right, they look rather more black than brown.  And they smelled incredibly divine, just like warm vanilla.  Wonderful.  And there were 71 beans!  Some of them might have been stuck together so I may have more than that.  As for the Tahitian beans, they were shorter in length and there were about 45 beans in the pack.  I found the scent of these rather strange, sort of floral?  I'm not sure what to do with these.  As suggested on the package, I quickly triple wrapped each type of bean in plastic and then stuff them in different ziplock bags and stored them in my cupboard (cool dark place).  Cook's Illustrated suggests wrapping them (individually!) in plastic, putting them in a zip lock bag and then storing in either the freezer or refrigerator.  I may split them up and try each method to see...I certainly have enough beans.  There will be no individually wrapping though, that's just insane.

So basically, I have more vanilla beans than one person could possibly use.  Some of it will go to the Bunny and my mom and I think I will give some to Laurie since she's been gifting me with plants.  I plan to make vanilla extract and vanilla ice cream and possibly creme brulee, but what does one do after that?  Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated.

More Crafts!

I don't think you can consider crocheting a NEW hobby exactly since I've been knitting and this is a yarn related craft.  Also the only reason I'm crocheting in the first place is to make cute toys for the baby bean.  I stumbled onto Creepy Cute Crochet back in December when I was busy looking for knitting projects for the bean.  While I was instantly smitten, I hesitated to buy the book because I didn't know how to crochet.  This was quickly solved by the purchase of a beginner's crochet book by Klutz.  I think if you know how to knit, crocheting is not too hard because you have some degree of yarn sense.  It took me about a day to feel comfortable and to make a couple of the projects in the book.  I forgot to take pictures of my crocheted flowers and Tony is sleeping over one arm now so I won't be able to remedy this, but here you can see a picture of the soap bag I made.  The tension is not quite even throughout the bag, but you can't really tell  with the soap inside.  This is a bar of my lemon milk soap.  I wasn't sure if I would be into the idea of using a soap bag (sort of like a washcloth wrapped around your soap), but I gave it a whirl last night and it was nice! I think it's especially nice for the soaps that I didn't add texture to (lemon milk and the recent almond cybilla).  

And speaking of soap, I just whipped up another half pound batch.  I used my basic milk recipe and the oatmeal milk and honey fragrance oil from Brambleberry.  This scent actually seems quite subtle, I'll have to see what it smells like over the next few days.  At trace, I added...oatmeal milk and honey.  The oatmeal was roughly ground with my mini food processor and I added just a couple of dollops of honey.  I'm not sure if it was the oatmeal or the honey, but I didn't hit immediate trace with the addition of milk as in previous batches. I ended up stirring this for a while until it looked pretty thick to me and then I poured it in the mold.  We'll see if there are any color changes with this batch.

Almond Cybilla Soap

So I really thought I was going to confine all my soap related posts to the Soapmaking Database but now I realize that I like to babble about stuff and soap is not exempt. I'm not sure Ferret would really care for my ramblings in the Database so perhaps it's better if I do it here. So this soap is a half pound batch of my usual recipe. After my tremendous (in my mind) success with the Lemon Castile Soap (Recipe 2), I saw no reason to mess with a good thing. The process was same as before; with less water initially, the soap mixture reached light trace quite fast and once I dumped in the milk I hit trace instantly really. I'm making a mental note to add the fragrance first and then the milk next time, because it really got thick so so fast. I love it. Now about the fragrance, I used the almond cybilla fragrance oil from Brambleberry's sampler kit and nearly died the second it went into the soap. Almond makes me think of clean and cream and that's completely what this smelled like. Swoon. This is certainly going to be a fragrance I use again. My whole house is still permeated with it even though I've stashed the box into my laundry room.

(Please note the gigantic amount of coconut oil in the background.  I bought 7 pounds of the stuff from Brambleberry for a really good price and was startled to find it in that baggie thing.  Once I put it in the microwave for a couple of minutes though, it came out of the spout quite easily without muss or fuss).

And now the box. I think several posts back I might have mentioned harvesting other people's trash from the recycling. This box was one of the things. Look how completely perfect it is! Not only is it adorable, but it serves a completely legitimate function in my crafting enterprises. Tomorrow after the soap is set I'll snap the lid down and let it cure away.

Since my soaps are now reaching real trace I think I'll reduce my curing time from 6 weeks to 4.  I used some 4 week soap recently with no irritation.  I do like having texture in my soaps though, so I think next time I'll use a little foresight and have something ready to add in.  Or not.

Update (2/6/11): Over the first few days the soap darkened first to a pleasing almondy color (tan) and then to an alarmingly brown color.  The scent is still fantastic but I'm dubious about the color.  It looks like fudge, rather than anything like almond...I'm not sure if it was the fragrance oil reacting or if the milk had anything to do with it.  Although when I think back, my lemon milk soap never turned such a dark brown so I think it must be the FO.  Here is a picture, I tried to make it appear vaguely artistic.

Making Soap

Because I'm a girl with a lot of hobbies I decided the only thing to do is to add to the list. I made my first batch of soap yesterday using the following recipe that I devised with the aid of this very nice lye calculator and the instructions at the simple dollar:

70% olive oil (11.2 oz)

20% coconut oil (3.2 oz)

10% crisco (1.6 oz)

handful of ground oatmeal

handful of lavender buds

Melt oils together (not too much, try not to exceed 120 degrees or it takes forever to drop back down) and then toss in the oatmeal and lavender. In a separate bowl combine:

2.2 oz lye

6.1 oz milk (previously frozen and then broken up into a bit of a slushy)

(Note to self: I found this mixture reached near 120 degrees)

Once the temperature of both reaches near 100 degrees, combine lye mixture into oil mixture (NOT the other way around) and then stir for a million years with a spoon or spatula until it becomes thick. Then pour into molds (any kind of container really) and leave somewhere to cure for a few days (I'm not sure how long yet, it was certainly still too soft today) and then remove from mold and cut up with a knife. Then leave to cure for 6 weeks before use.

Obviously, use some common sense with the lye and don't re-use anything that has touched the lye for food. I highly recommend looking at the tutorial on the simple dollar since they provide very detailed instructions and have pictures to boot! I was watching a baseball game at the same time and could not be bothered to take pictures of this process.

Update 12/4/10: I've started using the soaps and am enjoying it a lot. I do feel it could use more lather though so next batch I will try 70% olive oil, 25% coconut oil (4 oz) and 5% crisco (0.8 oz). I will also not use milk (to see if the soap will be white) but will retain the lavendar buds and oatmeal for texture. I have to say I've been looking forward to my showers just for an opportunity to use soap. Once my bathroom sink soap is done I will replace with a homemade bar I think.