Does It Really Do That????

To my (2) loyal readers, I'm sorry that I haven't posted in a week, but I have a lot going on. Anyway, I've resolved to keep this blog strictly about candle and soap making. No more rants. No more random ridiculousness unless it has to do with soaps and/or candles. With that being said, I have a new soap base that I'm trying out for my favorite specialty soap: Cupcake Soaps. While I love making them and bathing with them, I'm not crazy about the fact that my delicious creations turn brown after 2-3 days. "Why?" Is the soap base rancid or old? Nope. It's the vanilla content. My scent-d'jour, Cupcake, from one of my favorite suppliers Wholesale Supplies Plus, contains 14% vanilla. Holy cow! Now wonder my cupcakes look like doo-doo after a few days. It's starting to affect my sales, and I've got to do something quick. To combat this dilemma, I've invested, ok bought, two new products that I'm hoping will be the cure-all to my doo-doo soap blues.

The first product I bought is a vanilla-stabilizing M&P base from Natures Garden. This base is made with 99.5% glycerin and deodorized, double-distilled coconut oil, and Vitamin E. They actually had me at $4.25 for two pounds, but I'll take the double-distilled coconut oil. Anyhoo, I'm a little pissed at myself for buying four 2-lb slabs of this base because one, I've never tried it, and two, it's transparent (my fault for not reading the descriptions carefully.) I put a few chunks in my Pyrex cup and zap it in my microwave for about a minute, and it's now a yellow liquid. I'm slightly panicking at this point because I don't want a translucent cupcake soap, so I'm fully disclosing now that I've added a few small cubes of cocoa butter M&P soap from one of my other fave suppliers Candles and Supplies. Even after that, the soap is still too clear, but I proceed with what I have. The good news is I don't have to color this soap because it's already a light yellow. After I release the soap from my mold, I hook up some "icing" to pour over the soap. It too is also translucent. I'm not happy folks. Let's move on, shall we?

The second product I bought was from Wholesale Supplies Plus. It's a liquid additive actually called Vanilla Stabilizer. I was reading the ingredients list, and guess what it contains? Vitamin E! You simply add a tablespoon for every pound of soap. Since I'm only making one cupcake for now, I added about 2 teaspoons to 8 oz of soap. To that, I added a tablespoon of Cupcake fragrance. Yeah, yeah, it's a lot of fragrance, but I love this scent, what can I say. It literally fills my apartment with the scent of freshly-baked cupcakes. I color the soap with a tiny drop of yellow dye. My icing is used with the same soap base only I added a tiny drop of red and came out with this pinky-peach color.

Now for the test: I present 3 cupcakes: one using the vanilla-stable soap base, one using the vanilla stabilizing additive, and one using nothing. I'll post an update on Saturday to show how these soaps turned out. The soap on the left is the pre-made base. The soap on the right is my beloved cocoa butter M&P with no additives, and the soap in the back is the cocoa butter M&P with the the vanilla stabilizer added. I'm dying with anticipation to see how these turn out!