First Time Making Soap - Hot Process

Hi Lovelies!
Today I made my very first batch of soap! I have slowly been moving on from shop bought products, to homemade natural products. So far I have made lip balm (I used this recipe), and body butter (You can find the recipe here), and so I decided to take it a step further, and make my own soap!
For this batch, I used this recipe, by Mommy Potamus, however I substituted the coconut oil for copha (a hydrongenated form of coconut oil), and added in some grapefruit essential oil, as well as crushed, dried mandarin peel.

I also don't have a crock pot, so instead, I used a double boiler on low heat.

After all of my alterations, the ingredients looked like this:
468g Copha
178g Water
68g Lye (I bought this caustic soda from a hardware store)
Crushed, Dried Mandarin Peel (I did not measure this, but it was around 1/2 cup)
20 drops Grapefruit Essential Oil

I really loved this process, so I think I will be making some more soap very soon :)

After measuring out all of my ingredients, and collecting my supplies, I melted my copha in a double boiler.

 And then I prepared the lye solution, by slowly adding the lye to the water (do not add the water to the lye, because it will become very hot very quickly, and potentially boil over), and stirring in between spoonfuls.

 I then waited for the lye solution to transition from cloudy to clear, and added it to the copha.

Once the lye had been added to the copha, I took my stick blender, and blended to trace (until it thickened to a 'light pudding consistency'.

Once it had thickened, I put the lid back on, and let it cook at around 85 degrees celcius for about  hour.

After the hour had passed, I stirred it, and did the 'zap' test, where you take a little of the wax, and touch it to the tip of your tongue, and if it zaps you, it needs longer, but if it tastes like soap, then it is ready.

I then turned off the heat and waited for it to cool slightly, and added in my mandarin peel, and grapefruit essence.

I then spooned it into my silicone mould, and allowed it to set.

As I was spooning the mixture into the mould, it began to harden very quickly, and I found that I wasn't able to smooth it down as much as I would have liked because it was setting too quickly. I think this may have been due to using the copha, which has a much higher melting point that coconut oil, so for next time, I will stick to coconut oil.

After about 2 hours, the soap was completely set, and I popped it out of the mould, and whilst they are not the most beautiful soaps I have ever seen, I am very happy with the final product, and am hoping to make some more soon!

 Until next time,
Bella
xxx