Whoopsie....

 

I  made soap all last week. One loaf a day. The drying racks are getting filled up again.

I ended the week with some unscented goat's milk soap and it was not without drama.

My molds are in two pieces. You have a wooden outer part and an inner silicone liner so the batter doesn't run out and you can get the soap out once it's hardened. Without realizing, I poured the batter in the wooden part and forgot to put in the liner. Argh....what a mess.  I had to scrape it all out and put it in another mold. It's a good thing I have two of those molds and I wasn't planning any fancy color work.

But there's more....immediately following that drama I noticed that the last two loaves I made were full of  brown spots. What on earth...

Every single batch of the spotty ones was made with the exact same measurements, the exact same ingredients and tried and true fragrance oils as the non spotty ones except......

....the coconut milk. Coconut milk helps boost lather so it's a regular addition but I ran out after three loaves and ordered some food grade coconut milk from Amazon. I checked the ingredients and they were the same as the soap grade coconut milk (which is coconut milk and maltodextrin) but the percentages must be different. All those spots say too much sugar to me. Lye caramelizes the sugar making the dark spots. The same thing happens to goat's milk if you let it heat up and I let the spotty batches heat up because....who knew?

Oh, well.....it should be fine to use. Just weird looking and I've made plenty of weird looking soap. It all seems to work.