Rebatching again.

Grated soap. I use my stainless steel Eva trio pots for
absolutely everything. They can go in the oven, lid and all.

I'm rebatching my Sea Buckthorn soap.  It has been sitting on the curing rack for a while and it is still too soft.  It's a lovely yellow colour though!  So I want to keep that.  I also have these white soaps that I made to be whipped soaps from hard fats only.  I originally piped them into muffin forms and they were supposed to be very light and fluffy and float on water, but these would make pretty good dwarf bread (this is for Terry Pratchet fans only).  So I thought the two together would average out to a great soap.

I have grated 400 grams of the yellow soap and 200 grams of the white, mixed that in a pot and added about 4 tablespoons of yoghurt and the same of cream.  I stirred it a bit and put it in the oven with a lid on and turned the oven to 95C / 200F.  I stir it every now and again and it is looking good.  Still haven't decided if I'm going to whip it and make muffin soaps or just pour it into a mold.

Adding alkanet infused oil to the grated soap. I use my
kitchenalia, it's not just for show.

Now I have nothing to do but wait and I thought that this might be a good time to grate some more rock hard white soap and experiment with Alkanet.  I have tried that before and didn't have much success.  I was looking for lavender, but it turned a sickly shade of nothing.  Becky at The Soap Sister is doing an Alkanet experiment and I really look forward to reading about the results.  And Jen at Jenora Soaps has also been doing a series of experiments and is now on her third.  It's really interesting to try to crack this Alkanet mystery.

But, anyway, I went to look for a soap to rebatch and found some that looks quite boring, is a bit soft, but has a lot of nice things in it.  So here I go again grating.  This time I'm making a smaller batch and I think I'll grate it smaller.  That is supposed to give better results.  This is turning into a real test!

The alkanet colour in the rebatched soap. It was very grainy.

I have 235 grams of the nice, boring soap and 66 grams of the hard soap.   I have grated that finely and put it into the pot.  I decided to use yoghurt again (I'm out of milk), but no cream, and put about 1/2 cup into the pot and then I poured 4-5 tablespoons of infused Alkanet oil (sunflower) into the pot.  I have had Alkanet root sitting in Sunflower oil for some weeks now.  I just put a tablespoon of the root into a small bottle and filled up with oil.  I figured that if I had it handy I would be able to use it when I wanted, in full strength.

I tried to stir it but it was easier to just put my hands in there and squish it.  It looks and feels like wet rice.  Oh! Magic!  It's turned lavender already.  Maybe it's a little too dark?  Oh well, we'll see.  It's in the oven now on 85C / 185F.  I lowered the heat a bit, thinking that it might be too hot.  But the lid is a definite must.  It keeps the moisture in.  It takes over an hour, maybe two to get it to melt to the consistency I want.  I stir it a bit every now and again as I check it.  It doesn't froth at all.  I had read somewhere that that could be a problem.

The yellow one, on the other hand was very smooth.

The yellow has melted together pretty well and looks gelled so I have poured it into a log mold.  It's a bit lumpy like rebatch tends to be, but the colour is an even yellow, so I'm pretty happy with that.  I decided not to bother with a piping bag this time.  I've never done a rebatch without whipping it, so doing it this way is new to me.  I didn't add any scent to this as I can still smell the Sea Buckthorn and I like that scent.

I just found some lavender EO to put into the smaller batch and I picked out a silicone mould to use for it.  It's like half spheres.  I've never used it, but...  Now I just wait for the soap to melt...  I'm really tempted to whip the small batch...  I just don't want to bother with the mess of the piping bag, so maybe I should just put it into the molds as is...  Yep, finally it's done.  It looks a bit darker than I wanted.  I should have measured the amount that I used more carefully.  I add the EO by putting some in a bit of Sunflower oil and stir it into to the gelled soap when it has cooled a little bit.  And then I put it into the silicone mould.  The soap is gelled and a funny consistency.  Squishy.  The lavender somehow doesn't look as good a the yellow one.  Maybe rebatched soap looks better when it is a light colour.

As far as I can tell the yellow soap is lovely, but the lavender is too dark and b... ugly.  I'll have to rebatch them again and whip them into shape :)
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