I just finished making a small batch of laundry soap from Lard, distilled water and Lye, poured it into a empty cleaned half and half container and till tomorrow for it to be hard enough to work with. I'll un mold and grate it up to make another batch of laundry soap for our family. The last batch of homemade laundry soap I made lasted 8 months, not bad for a twenty dollar investment!
I decided since I'd already made a little mess maybe I should keep going and do an experimental one pound batch to test a natural colorant by using Alkanet Root powder infused in Olive Oil.
I have the lye and water cooling in the kitchen sink.
As the hard and liquid oils melt on a very low heat on the stove.
To infuse my Alkanet Root powder powder in Olive Oil I added one tablespoon to the oil in a 8 oz. mason jar.
I measured out the infused Alkanet Root in a one ounce shot glass type measuring glass.
While the melted oils were cooling in the sink - making cold process soaps I've been cooling my oils and lye to about 95 degrees before mixing them together. They take a little longer to reach trace so I have more time to play and add colors, swirls, fragrances, etc.
The lye water was at 95 degrees and the oils were 99 degrees, time to pour them together slowly and stir with the silicon spatula.
Next I used the stick blender to get the soaping process going and reach a thin trace.
It's time to add the Alkanet Root infused oil...
Hmmm, that doesn't look purple to me it looks gray green! That's ok, this is a one pound experiment so we'll keep going. I added the fragrance sample at this point too, it didn't change the color.
Time to pour it into the silicon molds. This first mold is a guest soap size that I bought at Amazon.com
Keep pouring, it's starting to get thick!
Ok, I've used up all the soap batter. Now we wait to see what happens...
Where can you get the Alkanet Root?
No comments:
Post a Comment