Soap cracked down middle

by Anonymous

Before I went to bed my soap was heating up as usual looking good. I was assuming it would gel as usual, so I kept the towels wrapped aroung the wood soap mold and went to bed. This morning when I peeked, 10 hours later, soap looks, feels and smells great but there is a crack right down the middle. It is still warm to the touch. What happened?

Answer:

When the soap heats up too much it will crack and all sorts of unusual things can happen.

I've once opened the soap to find that it had this squiggly pattern that looked like brains on the surface of the soap and when I cut into the soap it had this cracked glaze look to it. Admittedly it was kind of neat but not what I was going for.

Some people have had great caverns appear inside their soap and had some seperation that has completely ruined the batch.

I find that I need to keep checking on the soap until it reaches a full gel and then I unwrap the soap and place a fan on it to prevent the soap from overheating.

You could try using a bit less insulation with that recipe if you want to be able to leave it unchecked for a long period of time.

Milk soaps or those containing any type of sugar in it are more likely to overheat.

Cathy