Creamy Violets Soap

Last weekend I made some "Creamy Violets" soap.  Or at least I tried to.  I used Violets fragrance oil, a little bit of yogurt, and some lavender ultramarine swirled in with the cream-colored soap.  I swirled the tops and put it in the oven to saponify (turn from fats and lye into soap).

The soap gelled nicely in the oven.  But when I removed it, I could see that the nice swirled top fell flat.  And you can see that I didn't put enough ultramarine in it to make a nice color.  And one whiff told me that the Violet fragrance oil had been mostly eaten by the lye.  Drat!

Even after cutting the bars, they don't look all that great.  And I couldn't decide whether I like the smell.  After a couple days I decided that if I can't decide whether I like the fragrance--I don't like the fragrance. 

So this coming weekend I'm going to try rebatching the whole batch (minus the bar I'm currently using).

To rebatch soap,   you grate it up and melt it down with a little bit of liquid (not too much).  Since there's no lye in the soap, you can add your fragrance or any other delicate ingredients, and they won't be eaten by the lye.  Then you glop it into a mold and let it harden.

The downside to rebatching is that soap is really thick.  If you try to thin it with too much liquid, it takes forever for the liquid to evaporate and the soap to harden.  It's hard to get the soap into the mold without air bubbles.  And the texture is often not as nice as normal soap, because it's hard to melt all the chunks of soap.  But it is often the best way to save a batch of failed soap.

So this coming weekend will be the great experiment:  can Bonnie save a batch of soap by rebatching it.  Stay tuned ...