Cheesecake. Yum, right? Baked or chilled. French Vanilla or Raspberry. I would hesitate a guess that 99% of the population likes a cheesecake of some sort. My grandma used to make the best cheesecake around!
I can make cheesecake… soap! Or, so I thought. Perhaps less soap, more oil slick. Oil and cheesecake are not two words that belong in the same sentence! So, what the hell is this?!
Gross huh? This was the first batch of soap I made with the cheesecake fragrance that I drooled all over when I first smelt it. It’s the same soap recipe that I’ve used with all my batches this past week – dare I claim it my ‘finally found my perfect base recipe’ recipe? Although I’m still waiting to test a bar in the shower (damn cure time), so far it’s poured fantastically, set up beautifully and cut divinely! AND it even makes a really light bar thanks to finding a super light, yet non virgin olive oil! I like my oils slutty…
The only difference with this batch was I popped it into a cooling oven to force gel through. The oven was still warm as I had cooked lunch that day – perhaps that just shocked the shit out of the soap given I don’t normally “cook”? The process is known as CPOP – cold process, oven process. Sounds technical, really isn’t. Soap is made the same way, yet instead of leaving it on the bench to cool, you leave it in an oven that’s turned off but still warm. This forces the soap to go through a ‘gel’ phase which doesn’t always happen if left to it’s own devices on the bench.
Pulling the soap out of the oven after a couple of hours, the top had a layer of clear liquid. I assumed it was just relating to the added head and assumed it would soak back in. Like Shell, I just hoped it would disappear (oooooh, no you didn’t girlfriend!). Frustratingly, it didn’t. It only got worse and more noticeable!
After conferencing with my fellow soapies on what it might be and what I should do about it, the consensus was … wait. Just wait. So I waited… and waited. Nothing changed. Today I realised nothing was going to change, so I might as well see if I can salvage it.
Um…
Say it with me… “EEEEEEwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwww!!” My inner child flashed in for just a split second and thought about flinging the snot like substance across the room. Thankfully the parent in control knew she didn’t want to clean it up.
It. Felt. Gross! Like cold, runny, petroleum jelly. And rinsing my hand under the tap only washed the surface and instead left my fingers with a super slippery, greasy film. Oh gag it was disgusting!
The middle photo (above) is the oil slick cleaned up. But the top was still shiny.
No batch enters the bin without being dissected first! This is what I consider a soap autopsy. I couldn’t help but wonder if the entire oil slick was sucked out of my oatmeal base – it was dry and crumbly beyond expectation! Given the batch was gelled, if anything the oats should have been soft and ‘cooked’.
Those swirls (are they called swirls when they look like that? No actual ‘swirl’ to them?) are awesome, sad that they are being binned. But the entire batch has a sunken arch after wiping the goo away.
The complete disappearing act of my cheesecake fragrance has made it easier to bin. So sad that an ENTIRE bottle was made into two batches and both failed, miserably. Batch number two (pictured below) was the exact same recipe, same fragrance, everything. The only difference was it went into the cooling oven second and as a result didn’t stay in the heat as long. It still ended up with a slight oil slick however:
This would rate more in the ‘oopsie’ oil spill ranks… compared to the “omg the baby seals” that the first batch was!
Unfortunately cutting this batch also revealed another fail… and worse, upon cutting it, one of the hidden oil pustules POPPED! Like a pimple, it popped. Oh gag, gag, gag!
See the top middle photo? That’s the popping pimple of puss like oil! Nothing like pushing your knife into your SOAP and feeling like you’re dealing with a pre-pubescent teenager! It’s worse than my spots… my spots never POPPED!
I think I need a shower…
ShareCheesecake. Yum, right? Baked or chilled. French Vanilla or Raspberry. I would hesitate a guess that 99% of the population likes a cheesecake of some sort. My grandma used to make the best cheesecake around! I can make cheesecake… soap! Or, so I thought. Perhaps less soap, more oil slick. Oil and cheesecake are not…
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