Amy Warden's Soap Challenge - Mini Desserts

MINI DESSERTS SOAP CHALLENGE

May’s soap challenge hosted by Amy Warden at Great Cakes Soapworks was all about making mini desserts. It was fun to do but I had a problem setting my mind to just four desserts. In the end I made about 8, perhaps more. Choosing which four to present was not easy! Here's what I finally chose to enter:

From left to right: chocolate and nut cake with a dollop of chocolate cream, crustless blackberry cheesecake, cherry-pistachio nougat and coconut cake with chocolate cream.

The blackberry cheesecake and nougat desserts were all made with whipped CP soap to give them a light, fluffy texture. They're going to float in the bath tub when used, which will make them fun to use :). The other two and all 'chocolate cream' are CP soap made using the regular method. Coconut milk was used in all the desserts.

1. choconut cake:

Food item used: coconut milk, cocoa powder. Scented with hazelnut toffee FO by Bramble Berry.

CP soap batter + cocoa powder. 

In go the 'nuts', i.e. chopped up vanilla soap pieces.

and ... viola!

2. crustless blackberry cheesecake:

 The fruit and sauce are all M&P plus liquid non-bleed soap colourant. the soap is made from whipped cp soap. Scented with non-discolouring vanilla.

whipped hard oils (palm oil, shea butter, coconut oil)

liquid oils added, whipping goes on ... lye added, more whipping.

finally, coconut milk and the last of the whipping.

colourant added to cake base

cake mix piped in

M&P fruit added

  The blackberry fruit is made up of transparent M&P soap. Some straight from the mould, others rolled and shaped into small cones while still warm and pressed into tiny sugar sprinkles. Once set, I poured on the M&P blackberry sauce scented with blackberry ice-cream fragrance (Sensory Perfection).

sauce

 

3. cherry & pistachio nougat.

The same batter as that used above. Non-discolouring vanilla used to scent batter.

my 'pistachio' was made from white M&P soap + non-bleed soap dye.

The cherries are red CP soap chopped into small pieces, the choc is vanilla scented soap .

choc pieces go into batter

and the pistachio

in go the cherries

nougat mix in the mould

unmoulded and cut to expose the inside

cut into bite-size pieces

4. coconut cake:

 This soap was scented with vanilla coconut FO blend and has finely ground dessicated coconut in and on it. Decorated with a vanilla chocolate cream dollop.

                                    

I made more 'goodies' but those above are the four I entered.

The others:

Marshmallows: decorated with M&P 'chocolate' soap and sprinkles

Whipped soap marshmallows:

  Mini CP cupcakes with vanilla cream and chocolate topping. Sprinkled with cocoa powder.

   These cupcakes are tiny!

 CP toffee soap.

I dipped these into chocolate CP soap
and this is what I got:

 

Then decorated it with a M&P berry.  

A mini vanilla-almond coconut cake. It took ages to set up (stayed very very soft for almost two full days and kind of lost shape because I handled it too early ...

 Thank you Amy for organising this. It was a fun challenge to do. Good luck to all fellow soapers who took on this challenge :).

Great Cakes Soapworks - Spinning Swirl Soap Challenge

April’s soap challenge hosted by Amy Warden at Great Cakes Soapworks is the ‘spinning swirl' seen here, a technique that creates (ahem ... should create) a marbled effect in soap. I made two attempts at the technique and if time allowed I would probably have given it a third go to see if I’d finally get the kind of distinct marble swirls I was longing for!

Snapshot taken after spinning and 'tidying up' the top.

Two days later ... voila!

The first batch traced a little too fast, so the spin didn’t create swirls as clearly defined as I’d hoped for. I believe this happened because I used pomace olive oil ... yes, pomace! This, because I have loads of it and it often works OK in my regular recipes, even those with swirls. I ALSO used a fruity ‘berry’ FO custom blend which has never accelerated trace in the past, but who knows ... maybe it contributed to that this time. Another interesting thing is that some of my colours morphed! I wanted ‘berry’ shades to match the FO and used micas ranging from purple to dark red/maroon plus some TD for white and activated charcoal and a little brown mica for some contrast. I ended up with a salmon pink/coral colour and an olive green colour in some places instead of some of my colours! Strange behaviour, but I quite liked the surprise outcome.

I thought it turned out too 'unrefined' and there weren't enough swirls. So I decided to try again. This time I chose to go with yellow, green, brown, black, white and grey and a LOVELY lemongrass EO & cedar wood EO blend. I changed the recipe (used olive oil AND added sweet almond oil and shea butter) and despite the extra solid fat ... it was nice and slow BUT it took forever to set up!

after a few spins ...

I got anxious and started spinning when the soap was still a little too liquid, and after about 12 or so spins, I was sure it would be one BIG gooey, grey mess inside, so I stopped - despite the fact that the sides were all mushy grey and the middle had hardly budged during the spins.
My soap mould was rectangular and I think that makes spinning even less ‘even’. The top looked terribly messy! 48 hours later, once I cut the soap, I heaved a sigh of relief because it was quite nice inside. Again, no really distinct swirls and mine aren't nearly half as pretty as most participants' soap swirls, BUT they are so unique! Each piece is so different from the other. I love them!

    

I did not submit my soap - didn't think it made much sense seeing the awesome results of other participants :). I think this has been a fantastic challenge and so much fun to do! Fact is: I need to get more practice at achieving the perfect consistency for this technique, learn how not to spin the mould TOO hard and perhaps research more on how to combine colours (probably just looking at the other participants’ beautiful soaps will be enough). I’m REALLY looking forward to trying this out again. Warm thanks to Amy for providing us with yet another fun challenge to learn from. Looking forward to what lies in store next month ...

Congratulations to all participants who submitted their soap - they're so gorgeous! Voting will not be an easy task.

Great Cakes Soapworks Challenge Club - DNA/Helix Swirl

The challenge for Feb 2015 was to create the DNA/Helix swirl which is a variation of the Taiwan swirl.
Method - the three main steps are:
(1) laying down stripes of different colored soap on a contrasting base

(2) using a skewer is to pass back and forth perpendicular to the coloured stripes in a tight S pattern from one end of the soap to the other
and

(3) making larger S curves in the same direction as the tight S pattern to achieve the the DNA/Helix. This should reveal an hourglass-like pattern ... .

I made two attempts. The first is what I eventually chose for the challenge. The second attempt was meant to produce a 'better' swirl but as luck would have it I omitted step two by mistake - was simply absentminded! Both times I used a lovely scent called Tuscan Sun and chose colours that are reminiscent of the Tuscan landscape in Italy - green and yellow hills and fields, different shades of brown, sienna red and ochre. Perhaps a little too much but I just couldn’t leave any of them out. Making the swirl come out as it should turned out much harder than I’d hoped, but I’m sure with a bit of practice I’ll finally achieve the desired effect. For now, here’s my DNA swirl.

My second attempt ... minus step 2  :)

Freshly poured into mould

A few hours later ...

Flower Power Soap Challenge

  When I signed up for Amy's Flower Power challenge I had a million and one ideas about what I'd do. I have to say that this is not one of them! While planning what cookies to make for Easter this year, I recently looked for inspiration on YouTube and watched several talented artisans beautifully decorating their cookie tops in very many intriguing ways including 'wet on wet'. So, I thought to myself, "Why not try that out with soap?" And so I did. 

 And wasn't it DIFFICULT! CP soap batter is not easy to play around with! First round the soap set up too fast so I couldn't use it to decorate. Next time round the 'batter' just wouldn't set and that made work tough again. I am not really happy with my final result, but I am really glad I signed up, if only to see the other members' BEAUTIFUL soap! Well done soapers ... you've inspired me to keep trying.

  I am not really happy with my final result, but I am really glad I signed up, if only to see the other members' BEAUTIFUL soap! Well done soapers ... you've inspired me to keep trying.

Great Cakes Soap Challenge - embeds

When I signed up for this Soap Club Challenge, I thought I'd have plenty of free time on my hands to practise a bit by making a few batches and then choose the prettiest of the lot :). Well, that was all just wishful thinking - like always, I just had time to make one batch!
I chose to go with Sensory Perfection's Bubblegum FO to make my challenge soap - the scent matches the design since the embeds look like gumballs! And boy does it smell yummy  - like the real thing :). I used micas to colour the soap balls (5 colours) and just added a few drops of TD to the main soap.


I have just had a look at all the other participants' soaps ... amazing work (I'm clapping)! So artistic ... really beautiful.
Amy, THANK YOU for organising yet another fun soap challenge. Looking forward to learning another new technique in the near future :).
Good luck to all!