Soap with Spirulina

A friend let me know that ALDI had Spirulina on special this past week as she was keen to try it in soap as was I so I bought a packet to do some experimenting. To be honest I knew nothing about Spirulina apart from the fact that it was very expensive to buy but when I opened the packet....oh, the smell! What on earth was in this stuff??? So I did an online search and came up with What is Spirulina and it turns out it is a ' spiral-shaped microalgae that grows naturally in the wild in warm, fresh water lakes.' Hence the smell of seaweed.

Unfortunately, as you can tell from the photos, the results of my experiment was rather underwhelming but I always like to document my failures as well as successes in soapmaking as it is all a learning curve. The colour isn't as brown as it looks in the photo but is more like a dark olive green. It is hard to get the true colour in a photo I find. One day I will find the right setting to use.

I used a tried and tested recipe which had been run through the Soap Calculator which was as follows:

Soap with Spirulina

300g Olive Oil

300g Coconut Oil

400g Rice Bran Oil

142g Lye

380g Water

31g   Dragon's Blood Fragrance Oil

1t      Spirulina powder

I used the room temperature method and added the lye to the oils and stirred with a spoon a few times then used the stick blender for a few seconds as I didn't want the soap to go to trace too quickly. I then added the fragrance oil which I had done some research on and apparently it didn't accelerate trace and I was hoping the scent would be strong enough to overpower the smell of the Spirulina. The plan was to divide the mixture into two containers and add the Spirulina powder to one half to give a green colour while leaving the other half plain and then do some 'swirling'. 

So I took some soap from one of the containers out and put it into a small bowl to which I added the Spirulina powder and I mixed them together thoroughly before putting it back into the rest of the mixture. However when I went to pour the uncoloured half into the loaf mould it had gone to a thick trace so I ended up with a lumpy lot of soap. Not to be deterred I poured a bit of each lot into the mould in layers one on top of the other and finished with a plain layer. Then I took a chopstick and tried to do some swirling which was really a waste of time and because I often get soap ash on the top of soap made with the room temperature method for some reason, I sprinkled poppy seeds on top quite liberally. 

There was too much soap to fit in the mould properly which was unusual as a 1000g batch fits perfectly but nothing was going to plan so after banging the mould down a number of times to even it out and get rid of any air bubbles I ended up putting an old cutting board on top before wrapping it up. Not a good idea as I did what I always do and had a peek at what was happening a couple of hours later and the top of the soap complete with poppy seeds came off on the board when I lifted it up. So much for my nice even top layer. I also ended up with air bubbles despite all my banging. LOL!

Next time I use Spirulina for colouring I will use less and see what it looks like. You can see the results of using various amounts of the powder on Spirulina Soap Making. As I said it's all a learning curve and, if you make soap, it is a good idea to document what ingredients you used and what the outcome was so you don't repeat the same mistake twice. I am not sure what made this soap go to trace so quickly though.

Edited to add: I just took a couple of photos in a different light which shows the actual colours.  On one side of the soap the colour is green and the other side is brown. The brown side would be getting more light.

I could have picked a few better looking cakes of soap but I didn't have my glasses on. LOL! Keeping it real here...air bubbles and all!

 

I found this colourful little bug hanging around the other day. The CEO thought it was a Harlequin Bug.  I wonder if it survived the heatwave. I saw on the news tonight that New South Wales had had an 'average' temperature of 44C (111.2F) this past week. It was even hotter than that in many areas. Temperature records tumbled here in SE Queensland yesterday and we had our first recorded 40C day although I think it was hotter than that as we reached almost 40C last year and it certainly wasn't as hot as yesterday. 

There was no respite inside our house from the horrendous heat and when I went to bed the sheets felt like they had just been ironed as they were so warm. I was concerned about the chooks and guinea pigs as the latter were really feeling the heat but we all survived and lived to tell the tale although I think we are all a little bit the worse for wear at the moment. A cool change is in the air as storms have fired up this afternoon but we got no rain here and the weather for the coming week is looking much more like the norm for us. 

Roll on Autumn!!!!