Soapy Friday - Zucchinis and Honey Soap

Happy Friday everyone!

First, here's a huge zuke I picked from the garden. I swear, you turn your back on these things for a minute and they turn into monsters...

Monster zuke...coming to a garden near you!

Second, I am so excited to have received my first, official soap cutter from Bud's Woodshop on Etsy. This handcrafted work of art has GREATLY replaced the embarrassing cheese slicer I was using to cut loaves of soap, LOL!

My new soap cutter!

Third, I reworked my Honey Soap recipe....AGAIN. The last batch I made where I discounted the water amount and included pink sea salt to get a harder bar did not turn out the way I had hoped. It still did not have that smooth, creamy, hard bar look I was aiming for.

Honey soap don't care!

In fact, this and many of my past batches came out with a sort of grainy look to them and I suspected the large amount of sunflower oil was the culprit. It's still amazingly luxurious to use, but not what I want my final product to look like.

So, I tried another batch and replaced half of that sunflower oil with cocoa butter. Cocoa butter contributes to a harder bar of soap, while also contributing to its moisturizing benefits without decreasing lather, unlike shea butter. It also helps with eliminating soda ash.

Beautiful!

I immediately liked how this loaf looked compared to my other batches. It had a nice, consistent creamy-smooth appearance and I was able to unmold it and cut at 24-hours. Usually, I have to wait 48-hours with my previous, more sunflower oil, batches.

My new soap cutter is a dream! No more uneven bars of soap.

Cutting the soap

So, we will see in 4-6 weeks how this turned out, but I have a feeling I'm on to something!

All perfect and straight!