Chocolate Milk

Knowing that it was going to be a busy weekend, I made a soap sort of late on Thursday evening.  I did another goat's milk soap, but this time I used chocolate fragrance oil and colored it with cocoa powder.  I do not usually like foodie soaps for myself much, but I really wanted to try the cocoa soap for some reason.  Maybe it is because I love chocolate so much.

Anyways, I had the goat's milk measured and frozen beforehand as I had with the oatmeal, milk and honey, but this time I measured the oils out and let them come to a reasonable temperature (about 85°)  before I even took the milk out of the freezer.  Again, the mix came to trace nice and slow so it I chose to do something more complicated, I would have had plenty of time to work with it.  As it was, I did a plain chocolate color bar instead of doing a swirl.  I added about 3 teaspoons of cocoa powder to the mix at trace and it was still a bit light when I poured it into the mold.

Like the oatmeal, milk and honey soap, I put it in the freezer to avoid scorching.  I left it in the freezer for two hours then moved it to the fridge for the night.  This is where things differ from the oatmeal soap.  I slept poorly on Thursday evening and got up early Friday morning (kind of like I did last night, which is why I am posting so early in the morning), and took the soap from the refrigerator to see if I could unmold it.  I had been a bit impatient... and the soap was not quite ready.  I let it sit on the counter instead of trying to cut it immediately, and it went through gel phase.  I don't mind that it did, because it darkened the soap and didn't harm anything.

After it finished gelling, I was impatient to cut it and it was still too soft.  I managed to cut two pieces and then realized it was not working well, so let it sit longer.  I waited several more hours to cut it and then let it sit longer until I neatened it up and took pictures.  This was part of why I did not have this post yesterday instead of today.   So, this is the soap I dubbed "Chocolate Milk."

In other news, the soaps for the soap swap have begun to arrive and I got a few packages in the mail yesterday. I love seeing other people's creativity and how they have wrapped their soaps and such. I am looking forward to getting more of the packages in and getting pictures of the swap soaps! I also get a bunch more soaps to try out and see how I like!