There’s a first time for everything, and two days ago was mine with a bad soap batch 😦
I got some organic raw honey at Trader Joe’s and since it is very thick I thought it would make a perfect raw honey soap. I was very excited. So I sat down, thought of a recipe for this new honey soap that was supposed to be mild and moisturizing and just perfect, wrote it down and started to work. The only problem is that I was leaving to a concert in less than an hour so I didn’t have much time. But what the heck, I’m so excited I want to start anyway!
So I measured everything, melted my oils, put everything together and started to mix it. But wait! We are leaving in half an hour, I need to get ready! So I left the mixer on the crockpot and left. When I came back, the soap still was very liquid, didn’t get to the stage called “trace” when it looks like pudding. But I had to go, so I added the honey very quickly, left the crockpot on and left to one of the best concerts of my life! André Rieu and the Johann Strauss Orquestra celebrating their 25 year anniversary. Oh, my! Totally worth a bad batch of soap.
When we got back I came running to see my new beautiful soap and I discovered… An awful pool of oil with some crumbled things in the bottom. What is this?! But it smells delicious. Maybe it needs to cook more, so I left it over night. But in the morning it was the same thing. So I kept on cooking. Cooked for about 18 hours when finally it kind of blended together (it usually takes 1 – 1.5 hours to cook) and I was able to put it in the mold. And there it was, this black, stinky puree of whatever it was, but not soap! Looks like the thing never saponified. So sad! I thought about putting it back in the crockpot and add more lye since there hadn’t been a reaction yet, but I think I might just let it go and start a new batch.
I don’t know what happened, if it was the honey, the soy milk, the lack of mixing because I had to go or too little lye, but this was my first failed batch of soap and even though I know we are humans and supposed to make mistakes, I’m really NOT HAPPY about this one in particular. If it wasn’t for the amazing show I had just seen I’d be pretty upset. Now I’m just sad of losing all that delicious honey. Oh, my raw honey!
Getting up on our feet again, I’m carefully repeating this batch with a few modifications. It smelled just amazing and, in theory, it should make a great soap! So sit tight and wait for the soap bee to find her way home  🙂
Sweet Meadowsweet 