Making "Beneath the Surf" Translucent Cold Process Soap Hybrid

In this video, I continue my exploration of translucent soaps for luxurious, artistic soap and present a recipe I came up with that seems to have nice qualities. I may find a better formulation in the future, but for now, this one works pretty well. I love the beauty of translucent soap, but I am sold on the idea of making translucent/cold process hybrids to provide the best moisturizing and lathering qualities that I have come to love and prefer with cold process soaps. While I love the ease and clarity of soapncrafts’ recipe, it does shrink quite a bit faster than my shea soap recipe. So last weekend, I pulled out my soap making books and looked at a few recipes and the procedures outlined for making transparent soap. They all gave procedures that would take about 2 hours to make the soap using either a crock pot or stove top to cook the soap. But after what I learned about making transparent soap in 10 minutes from soapncrafts, I realized that there was probably no reason translucent soap couldn’t be made faster by using the microwave instead of the stove top or crock pot. From my initial observations, it seemed that to make translucent soap, just about any soap recipe could be combined with glycerin, then it needed to be completely saponified and gelled. Once it was saponified, sugar water and alcohol could be added to make it translucent. I tried three different recipes (including my favorite shea butter soap recipe) and sure enough, it worked. I could make translucent soap in less than 10 minutes instead of 2 hours. But I had to heat the soap carefully to avoid a volcano boil! First of all it was very important that I used a pitcher large enough to hold the soap as it expanded. I used a 3 L Polypropylene Beaker for a 43 oz (1.2 L) soap recipe. I also placed the mixing pitcher in a large stainless steel bowl while I mixed it just in case the mixture boiled over. To make the soap, I began by measuring the oils and glycerin in my pitcher and heating them to 170-190 deg. F. Then, I added the lye water and mixed it well. I continued to heat the soap in the microwave in 15-30 sec increments (while carefully watching it to make sure it wasn’t boiling over) and mixing the soap between heating. I was very careful and aimed at keeping the temperature BELOW 212 deg F. Every time I mixed the soap, I used pH strips to test the pH. After about a total of 2 minutes of the heating/mixing cycle, the pH went from 13 or 14 to between 7-10 (depending on the recipe). The soap looked creamy at that point. When the soap had finished its saponification (was between 7-10), I added the sugar water and alcohol and mixed it all until it was homogeneous using my stick blender. It looks cloudy at first, but I just put it aside and after a couple of minutes, it became translucent not transparent but a lovely golden, translucent soap. WARNING-If you choose to use this microwave method, be very careful to heat the soap slowly while watching it in short interval increments- maybe even 10 sec at a time- until you are experienced -and follow the procedure carefully. It is possible for the soap to boil over like a volcano if you microwave it too much at once to too high a temperature. That hot soap would be dangerous and a big mess to clean up. See Chapter 13 (of my free e-book4!) for the recipes and more information about this soap:
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My free ebooks are at my website: here: http://www.fromgracetoyou.com/
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The Music: “Emotional Anime Soundtrack” by Orchestrelis
(https://audiojungle.net/user/orchestr... ) found here: https://audiojungle.net/item/emotiona...
AND
“Moving Hands Like Clouds” by manukamusic (https://audiojungle.net/user/manukamu... ) found here: https://audiojungle.net/item/moving-h...
Thank you!