That title says it all, this is the 3rd soap I’ve made since I joined the soap challenge club, and I was determined and focused on the goal of getting my swirl technique as close to perfect as I could. This time when I attempted it, I wanted my soap to show that I was learning. So I kept it simple, ok sorta simple, minor tweaks only. You know I can’t ever make things easy for myself.
The challenge this time, was the tiger swirl technique. I really liked it, and it looked so simple from the demonstration, and as we all know simple is my new middle name! I didn’t even want to stray too far away from the recommended slow moving recipe that Amy had suggested, that’s how simple I wanted to keep it. Of course, that meant I just had to change something about it. Amy’s recipe was listed as:

”…a type of clarified butter that is not only used in the dishes, but also in medicines and traditional religious rituals in many parts of Southeast Asia.

“Ghee” comes from the Sanskrit word meaning “sprinkled,” and it basically means that the milk fat is rendered from the butter to separate the milk solids and water. It’s made by melting butter and skimming the fat off of the top. You’ll be left with a yellow liquid when it’s hot and a creamy looking solid one when the ghee cools down. Not only is this easy to make, ghee also has a number of benefits.”  – Medical Daily

 

     I make no claims about health benefits or anything medical, I just know it’s a great tasting cooking fat that can tolerate relatively high heat. So I tweaked Amy’s recipe by subbing out beef tallow with ghee, I didn’t even change the percentages. Other than that I followed her recipe to the letter. To keep the batter fluid, I also added 1 tsp. of sugar per pound of soap, since I was only making 2lbs. of soap, I obviously added 2tsp. of sugar. Then I got worried that it would take too long to set up, because it was a slow moving batter and then I added a de-celerant to it. So I thought to myself, I’ll add salt, but not the same amount as the sugar, because I thought that it would basically neutralize what I was trying to do.  I’m not sure if that’s actually true, but I didn’t want to test it out. So, only 1tsp. of salt was added to the batch.

The colours were the same as well, with the holidays upon us, I had no extra funds to spend. So, I used what I had on hand Moroccan red clay, Activated charcoal, and Paprika. I knew from the cosmic swirl soap that a mixture of red clay and paprika would give me the orange colour I was looking for.  I decided to be very literal about this particular swirl So I mixed up my tbsp. of oil with 1 tsp. of colour and added it to my soap, of course it was not enough and I had to add to ‘taste’. It ended up being more like 2.5 tsp of charcoal to get the right black, 3.5tsp. red clay and 2.5 tsp. paprika for the orange.

 

If you’re checking out those colours you would guess that I went VERY literal for this swirl. I mean, tiger stripe swirl obviously means ‘make it look like real tiger stripes’. That’s the naturalist in me coming out, can’t deviate from the correct colours that nature prescribed. Ok, I know that sounds weird, but I was trying to keep it simple and the idea of using super bright colours just didn’t feel right to me, also I didn’t have any super bright colours on hand to tempt me.

the next one, that I did some experimenting with, looked like what I thought it should look like, with the white right under the orange. My stripes for both are amazing, at least to me.

My nephew thought it would be cool to stick his finger in the soft soap.

While, I didn’t add any fragrance (I’m still not sure about adding smell goods, because I’m never sure how people will like it, and then might get stuck with stinky soap), it still had a unique scent. I thought the ghee scent was very prevalent, no one else noticed that, but they did say that it smelled good. It was also a but crumbly on the edges, I personally think that was due to not gelling it. If I use this recipe again (almost positive I will), I’ll definitely gel it, come to think of it, these colours are really bright for not going through gel.