Great Cakes Soap Works Challenge #8

Last week for Amy's Challenge was Salt Bars. I usually make a salt bar, with my basic soap recipe, table salt, grated plain castile soap (just for looks) and scented with spearmint, peppermint and eucalyptus. This is a popular soap, but as I make it regularly it wasn't much of a challenge, so I went to soapcalc.com and worked out a different recipe.

As a part of trying to rid our diet of processed foods, I had bought a packet of Murray River salt flakes, which are harvested/mined and packaged down stream of the Murray River at Mildura. We live at the head of the Murray River, not sure how far it is in km's but it is about a days drive. This got me thinking, what else is Mildura famous for? The first thing that came to mind is oranges, and then olive oil. So I thought I would make an orange salt soap.

I used 40% each coconut and olive oil, then 10% each of beef render and castor oil. Salt ended up being about 50% of the fats and oils, I left the superfat at 0% as after researching using orange juice as the liquid it came out that the acid in the juice would negate some of the alkaline of the lye.

Salt Flakes, I love the colour of them. Pity the pink doesn't stay in the soap.

I finely grated the orange zest and then juiced about 4 oranges, All this was added to the lye. About 50% of the liquid was orange juice, the rest was water.

Mildura may be famous for olive oil, but the Upper Murray has the best, so why use any thing but the best. Especially when it is grown right here.

The soap took ages to come to a trace. So long that my stick blender overheated. Finally it became thick enough to add the salt. I scented it with a mix of Orange EO, Lemongrass EO and Benzoin Oleoresin. I am hoping that the Orange zest and the Oleoresin will hold the citrus in place. But it was such a small batch that it probably wont matter too much. I poured the mix into my trusty HD individual molds so I wouldn't have to cut it. One thing I hate about the salt bars is cutting them. Extra batter went into the silicone ice cube trays for guest soaps.

I am very late in getting this post up, but due to driving the 7 hours to Sydney to visit our eldest daughter for her 21st birthday was worth it. I hope all the Mums out there had a lovely Mothers Day. 

I can't wait to sit in front of the computer for a few hours and check out what all the other challenge participants did.But I think I need to be thinking about this weeks challenge, Peaked Tops......

Great Cakes Soap Works Challenge #7

The challenge that Amy set us this week in her weekly challenges was to make a gradient coloured soap. I think that the only time I had seen this done was on Soap Queen with M&P soap. But after watching all the youtube videos available to me I was keen to take on the challenge. 

All my soap supplies are down a bit so the first challenge was to work out what colour and scent to use. After looking at what supplies I had and what soap I am running out of I decided to work with brambleberrys Turkish Mocha fragrant oil and coloured with cocoa powder and ground coffee.I kept my recipe exactly the same as last week as it seemed to trace at just the right speed that I thought I would need. I haven't done a Turkish Mocha for a while and I was hoping that it wouldn't speed things up too much. But after watching Amy take 1 1/2 hours to complete her pour. I didn't want to stand around for that long either. 

I had a photographer this time, so now I don't have the trouble of not having photos, I have the trouble of picking out which ones I want out of the 98 that were taken.

I added ground coffee thanks to the kids at Corryong College hospitality class and cocoa to the mix for colour and exfoliant.

I kept some of the batter to the side so I would have a white top.

The fragrance did speed up the trace a bit, but not too much. It did discolour though.

So I added titanium dioxide for good measure. Yes I know I am naughty for not wearing gloves but I forget, and when I start to feel burning spots on my fingers it is too late anyway.

Pouring the first layer, looks just like chocolate ganache.

I have a thing about making the coffee soap in cups and cupcakes,so I couldn't resist doing the layers and seeing how they would turn out.

Adding the second layer. I was impatient and could see it sinking a bit, so I tried to be more careful.

Adding more plain batter to the colour.

Adding another layer

Finally the white top.

I had some brown mica infused in oil from another soap so I mixed it with some of the plain batter too, and had the opportunity to use the sauce bottle I had paid 20c for at the op shop just for this purpose.

To this point I am very happy with the results, but the proof is in the cutting.....

The butterflys were from the last scrapings of the bowl. I hate to waste any soap. And I think these have real practical joke potential. Even my husband almost picked one up thinking it was a chocolate.

Over all I am very happy with the end result. But I can see how it would have been heaps better had I been more patient between layers, and taken the time to do things like wipe the side of the mold. I will definitely be doing a gradient soap again. Thanks again Amy for setting these challenges each week, they are such an inspiration, as is looking at what everybody else around the world has done for their challenge. Check them all out here. 

Great Cakes Soap Works, challenge #6.

Yes I am a bit slow off the mark, but, hey, it is better late than never. To really tell the truth, I have been putting off soaping, as I said in my last post. This last week I have been thinking how I really need to get back into it, so to get some inspiration I checked out some of my favourite soap blogs, and following some links to some other favourite ones that I had forgotten about and some new ones. As you do.... I felt like I wasted days, as you do.... Any way I re discovered Amy at Great cakes soap works and she has been running a weekly challenge. As you can tell I am 5 weeks behind but the beauty of this is that you can just jump in where you are.

So this weeks challenge is a Faux Funnel Pour. I do a similar pour for my Aussie Bush soap but for this I wanted to make it a bit different, I have been thinking about making a peppermint soap as I am totally out of peppermint, I wanted it to be green, naturally, so I went to the garden and picked some silverbeet to see how that would look, but one colour does not work with the fauz funnel pour, so I made two batches simultaneously, one with the silverbeet in the lye, and the other plain

The green colour started coming out instantly. This was very exciting for me.

And made the soap mix a really pretty grass green. I halved this pot and added charcoal to the other half.

I halved the plain batch and added alkanet root that had been infusing in oil for months to one half. To the other half I put in White Kaolin clay.

Here with the rest of the mess on my bench is the four pots with alkanet, kaolin clay, silverbeet and charcoal.

Sorry no photos of the actual pour but I am not very good at multi tasking. And the only person available to photograph was busy making our dinner, so that was a good enough excuse not to grab the camera, especially when I got to taste test the dinner before it went into the oven to bake for the afternoon. 

 The mix was a bit runnier than I was hoping for. But that meant that I had time to do a hanger swirl , again no photos. But it will be interesting to see when I cut it.

Now it is nicely tucked up beside our combustion stove, and as you can see,(or maybe not, the photo is worse than I thought it was)  that it is starting to gel. 

I ended up scenting it with 2 parts each of peppermint and lemon myrtle, and one part eucalyptus, or there abouts as my scales decided that weighing something that small was too hard. But the smell is great any way.

As you can see I have not got my most expensive mold for this batch, the reason for this is that most of my soap making stuff has been moved to the hut, but the hut is not quite ready for soap making to happen in yet,  so after giving it some thought I decided that this box would be just fine. I'll post photos of cut soap as soon as I get to cutting it.

Over all I am pretty happy with the end result, as I said earlier the mix was a bit runny so it swirled more than layered, but you can still see all four colours. The batch did get a bit too hot while it was gelling and there are a few small "volcano Pockets", but it looks pretty and smells great.

Where has the time gone...

I have been feeling really guilty about not updating this page, or my facebook page, and in the last couple of weeks I have had some questions about buying soap and some enquirys on the blog, so I thought that I had better get on here and update.

 We did go to the Seymour Alternative Farming Expo, somewhere there are some photos. In February just after the Seymour Expo we were invited to take part in the "Tallangatta Expo" which was a bringing together of all the Towong Shire's artisans, there was a huge array of handmade goods, from icecream to wooden chopping boards. We have had our regular farmers markets and for the first time there is talk of them going through winter.

But mostly I have been busy at home and on the farm, our vegetable garden produced a bumper crop of tomatoes, our apple and pear trees did not want to be out done by tomatoes, so we got heaps of apples and pears, not to mention the chillies, blackberries, basil, peas, beans and of course it all seemed to come at once. So I have been busy freezing, pickling, and bottling the produce.

We have dealt with floods again, thankfully we live in the hills and the floods come and go pretty quickly. My heart goes out to all those down stream who get inundated with the accumulated flood waters that hang around for weeks and months.

 We have also been busy fixing up our "hut" which is a cabin that we built about 10 years ago, it has been a spare room for guests, it was our temporary accommodation for a couple of months when we moved back here from the dairy farm, we always wanted to make it into a B&B. But lately our plans have taken a redirection, which they are often apt to do. As the soap making is out growing the laundry cupboard, kitchen and dining room we decided that we should make the hut the soap making centre. So the floors got sanded and sealed, the kitchen and laundry areas got tiled. Now we just need to put the sink and stove back, add a bench and a washing machine and the hut soap making centre is all ready to go. There will be a proper blog post about this soon as I will be starting to advertise it a bit more, we are hoping to have tea and coffee facilities and a few other items to make an interesting little shop.

 In the midst of all this I have made a batch of goats milk and honey castile soap, and learned to make liquid soap thanks to a very informative soap queen video and ebook. I just picked up another 10 litres of our beautiful snowy mountains olive oil. So I am hoping that this week I will be restocking heaps of soap.

Upper Murray Farmers Market

Today was the Farmers Market, over all the day was pretty quiet, a couple of new faces and lots of old ones. As always it was good to catch up with people we haven't seen since the last market. Ayala decided to get busy and cook nougat, coconut ice, rocky road and fudge. Kath picked heaps of blackberries, but had another stall at the other end of the park where the Arts Upper Murray group were having a craft market. Kath did get some time to take a few photos, but as she felt a bit conspicuous she took them from a distance.

Mary Grant and a yummy range of jams, pickles and sauces

Tom and Thea Newton from Tandara Gardens with a range of trees and shrubs

Fresh meat from Trevor and Sarah Klippel of Sugarloaf Herefords

The BBQ

Mt Mittamatite Bites

Looking up the park to the free range eggs and Lou Curven with her lip balms and body butters.

CWA ladies with cakes and jams

Jennifer Fennell with her photocards

Katherines sewing

Bonita Nicholas with lots of crafty things

The next market is on the Monday of the long weekend in March. It is all set to be a big weekend in town with the Towong races on the Saturday. Hopefully we will see lots of new faces at the market on the Monday before everybody leaves town.

It's not all about soap

Soap making has taken a back seat this last month, although I have made some liquid soap, more about that in another post. I currently have the best vegetable garden I have ever had, the tomatoes are ripening, we have beans galore, the snow peas and other peas are producing really well, as are the chillis, carrots, and beetroot.The mizuna has been beautiful and we are still eating it although some of it is starting to go to seed. One thing we have an abundance of is basil, I only brought one punnet and at the time it didn't look like much, but it grew, and grew. Yesterday I wanted to make some of my "green gunge" which is a salad / vegetable dressing made with whatever herbs I can find in the garden, garlic, lemon juice or cider vinegar, and olive oil. So I went out looking for herbs and started at the basil, it had grown so much that I only picked basil. I brought it in and decided to freeze it. So here are the photos of how to freeze basil, or any other herb so that it is in an easily usable form when you want a hit of fresh summer herbs sometime during winter. 

This is how much basil I picked, the red container is a 3.5lt

Chop it up, as fine or as rough as you like.

stuff it into ice cube trays.

When it is all stuffed in, fill the trays up with water. This is how much  all that basil chopped  and squashed down to.
Freeze it, and be prepared for some strange comments. Especially if you have a guest for dinner and he brings ice cream.

The frozen basil the next day, ready to put into freezer bags. 

A word of warning, the basil will stain your ice cube trays, but there are worse things in life than basil flavoured ice cubes.

Now  when you are cooking a bolognaise, or a casserole, or soup, whatever. all you do is throw in a ice cube of herbs for a beautiful fresh hit of summer.