Too much additive... I think

by Christy
(OKC, OK, USA)

Hello. My soap is doing the opposite of gelling. It is getting hard on the outside and staying soft on the inside. I didn't superfat or lye discount but I did add 6 ounces of pumpkin puree to my oils and blend right before adding my cool lye water.

It's been several hours and my soap doesn't look like it will be setting up and saponifying in the middle. Did I add too much puree? The recipe didn't have any puree added cause the calc doesn't have an option for adding things like that.

Answer:

You may have too much liquid in the soap. When adding in a puree you have to remember that the puree consists of fruit or vegetable pulp and water. You need to reduce the water amount in your recipe by the amount of water in the puree.

It's not going to be an exact amount since it is very hard to figure out exactly how much water is in the puree but you can make an educated guess.

Your 6 ounces of puree likely had at least 4 ounces of liquid in it. Just replace some of the water in the recipe next time by that amount. Some people will even sub 6 ounces of puree for a full 6 ounces of water. Be sure that the recipe you are going to substitute in puree doesn't have a water discount.

You can add the lye to the reduced water by itself and add the puree to the oils like you did or you can add the puree to the water and add the lye to that mix. Either way is fine. I tend to like to add in all my 'goodies' to the oils or at trace and not to the lye water directly.

Cathy