Who says it can't be done?
April 7, 2008
I am neither an artist, nor a writer, or any other sort of genius creator, but I think I have a muse and her name is Anne. She and I were talking one day, near the end of the great chocolate search. In fact that recipe and some sample soaps are wending their way west to her soaphouse. There is only one last tweak to that recipe to make it perfect.
Somehow the topic of coloring milk soap came up and I found myself volunteered to delve into that aspect of soapmaking. Apprently not much has been done in this area. Googling milk soap color turns up hundreds of entries bemoaning the fact that milk soap inevitably turns brown. Not so folks, white milk soap is as easy to achieve as making ice cubes. The short list is freeze your milk then add the dry lye to it. The long list is in Anne's book and various soapers' discussion lists.
But again I digress. My conversation ended with me having the mandate to see how well colorants work in milk soap, or if you can get them to work at all. She also agreed to accept another recipe from me for said book. So, once again dear folks, you will have to wait for the the book. Anne has developed what she calls the warm technique for milk soap making that seems to work. I've been using that for my testing. Although I haven't tried coloring a batch made with frozen milk, I don't think there would be time to do anything fancy. However I will test that one later. For now it's all warm. I recommend you use a oils that yield a white soap for this type of thing.
My first two batches of colored soap yielded good if not so attractive soap. The first one I was attempting pot swirl with lavender and rose FO , and lavender and red colorants. Trace was extremely fast. My technique was pot swirl. However by the time I put the swirl colored soap back into the pot it had more or less seized and had to be force swirled in by cutting it in with a knife. The soap looked sort of nice for a few days then turned an ugly grey brown.
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