pH Adjusted Baby Soap

Let's have fun with acid! Citric acid that is. In this tutorial, Bramble Berry created a shampoo bar and added citric acid to it to bring down the pH to 7. Knowing cold process soap to be alkaline in its most basic nature (punny!!) this was very interesting to me. Of course I had to try it.

While I would never, ever, ever use soap-even with a lowered pH-in my hair* I thought it would make a nice bar for babies!

I wanted to make small manageable sized soaps that it would be easy to wash little bodies with. I wish I had a round bar guest mold, but I only have a square. I will bevel off the sharp corners once they are cured. For babies I figured it's best to omit scent and color. I only added on one special thing (besides the normal special things of kaolin clay, colloidal oatmeal and silk) buttermilk. I have soaped with coconut milk, goat milk and yogurt before but never buttermilk. So I suppose that was part of the experiment too! I have done all milk and the 50/50 method with milk. I like the 50/50 method since it's the easiest. This involves making the lye water with half of the total liquid and using water. Then pouring the other half of the total liguid, milk, into the soap at trace. For example, your recipe calls for 10oz liquid with your lye. Make the lye water with 5oz water. Then at trace, pour 5oz of milk in. Make sure the milk isn't too cold or it will shock the soap and cause it to thicken.

The guest mold only adds up to 10.8 ounces of soap. That is a teeny batch. I'm not even sure that would cover my stick blender! I upped the batch to also fill my 20oz mold (18oz full at least). This way I could try the baby bars too! Best to human test everything, especially when you are gifting it to children or babies.

For my batch I added some titanium dioxide and some White Amber fragrance oil. The White Amber is from Nemat International. They are not strictly a soap fragrance company, more perfume oil so they didn't have notes on usage rates or how this plays in soap. Since I knew virtually nothing about the fragrance oil AND I was monkeying with the pH, I didn't attempt a design.

I read in the Bramble Berry tutorial to use citric acid at 1% of the total yield of your batch. Since I was splitting the batch I created two citric acid solutions. One for the baby soaps, .10oz with a tablespoon of distilled water, and .18oz for my batch. I just swirled the citric acid in the water until it dissolved.

Traditionally people like a Castile soap, 100% olive oil, for babies or sensitive skin. Maybe I haven't had a good Castile, but it seemed kind of draggy to me when I tried it and to be good it can take a YEAR to cure up! I want it sooner than that so I fiddled with the soap calc and thought about what soaps have been super conditioning so far. I settled on 40% palm, 40% olive and 20% shea butter. This will make a bar that has little to no cleansing properties, and not really any lather. Palm does make a cream-like lather and olive is known to do that too. So I am hoping this is lotiony-soft and not drying what so ever.

*yes I know some people love it and swear by it etc. It's just not for me. Hair is naturally acidic and my hair likes to stay that way. I use a home made syndet shampoo bar and store bought conditioner and love it. So, to each their own!

Mold set up. This time I won't be able to forget to take design pictures! There isn't one!

I get the right amount of soap, I weighed it. Just put the container on the scale and weighed off 10.8oz of soap. Then I added the appropriate beaker of citric acid mixture, stirred that up and poured. Perfect-o

Ok, soooo... the rest of this did NOT go as smoothly. First small-ish thing: I really am hating my titanium dioxide. It's water soluble and I don't really think it is. Meaning, every time I use it I get speckles of white. I usually distribute it in distilled water and give it about an hour to 'marry', but that doesn't seem to be cutting it. I might try distributing it the day before next time. I don't want to give up on it because I have a big bag of it and I like water soluble colorants!

Secondly, one of my adorable 50ml beakers fell down the garbage disposal (no it wasn't on thank goodness!!) and the metal nut punched a hole through the bottom. Wah I love these things! It's also not fun or safe to have to pick glass out of the disposal...

Thirdly, lastly, and most disturbing. This happened:

Let's look closer at the chunks...

SO. I was playing with the top of this soap, trying (and failing) to get it to peak. It was pretty thin so I gave it a while and came back. When I tried the second time I broke through the top into an oily, chunky layer underneath. A morbid sort of curiosity made me dig deeper, literally. Stirring and unearthing more unpleasant chunks. Then that panic set in, where you should just stop, step back and let it go. You don't. You spring into action that actually makes things worse! I poured the soap back into my mixing bowl and tried to subdue the chunks. I basically just broke them up into smaller pieces. I poured the soap back into the mold and tried again to make it pretty. Peaks were not happening. It was just not setting up enough to get anything but 'vomit' for a design. 

Enter Gold Sparkle Mica:

I used a new technique I saw on a soaping video for mica topping soap. I rubber banded a double layer of cheese cloth over the top of the mica jar and shook it gently over the whole thing. While it doesn't really hide the chunky texture underneath, it is even and the first time I've done mica well! This opens up the Pencil Line technique for another time.

A note on this technique, when you take the rubber band and cheese cloth off the mica jar, do so carefully. Maybe even in a plastic bag, or outside. Mine snapped off and caused all the residual mica trapped in the cheese cloth to pouf into the air. Let me tell you, mica goes airborne. For a while. And then settles on EVERYTHING. And I mean EVERYTHING. I've been glittering like a vampire for days. Not to mention my disco-tastic kitchen!

So why did this happen? Well it didn't happen to the baby bars, but I'm not sure if that means much since they are in such small amounts and I didn't touch them after pouring. Did I interrupt it too soon? Maybe. Stir up some internal gelling process? I don't think so. This was very wet and oily. Could the fragrance have caused this? Yes it could have. Could the citric acid have done something to it? Maybe.

However, I am more inclined to blame the buttermilk overheating. I forgot (how could I forget??) to put the little loaf in the fridge to help the milk stay cool. I have had more things go wrong when I use animal milk than any batch that uses water. Milk is just a little tricky for me personally. I probably just need more practice!

I won't really know why this happened until I test each one of these possible factors separate from the others. I have a large bottle of White Amber fragrance so I will be trying that one again for sure! I'm inclined to try the milk again because I have more. As for the citric acid, I will probably wait until one of these bars is cured and tried to see if it is worth trying again. Not that it was very difficult to do, I'd just like to see if I notice any difference before bothering again.

Amazingly enough they didn't turn out too bad! I can't smell any White Amber fragrance what so ever, just that unpleasant cheese smell that can sometimes happen in milk soaps. It has since gone away though and I'm hoping the White Amber will appear as it cures (not likely...) They actually came out very nice looking. The little bars are pretty too! Bright white! They have just a hint of gold mica dust on them since as I said, it was everywhere!

Just some white squares, not much to report until they are tested!

In natural light the gold is more subtle, but it is very gold in other lighting. Pretty though and hardly any air bubbles! I can see the titanium dioxide specs though... You can see the lumpy bumps when you get closer, but this will not matter at all if it turns out to be an amazing feeling soap!