Cold Process Pumpkin Roll Soap

It smells like Thanksgiving around here!  I made some Pumpkin Roll #handmade cold process #soap this week so that it would have time enough to cure before Thanksgiving.  I wanted to have some gifts ready for friends and family over the holidays, and this recipe sounded like it fit the bill.

I started out using Bramble Berry's Pumpkin Puree Cold Process Soap recipe.  In fact, I used their recipe exactly, just halfing it so that it would fit into my 3 pound mold.  The recipe worked really well, but I'd caution that the addition of pumpkin puree made for a pretty intense gel phase.  Instead of Bramble Berry's pumpkin spice fragrance oil as recommended, I used Pumpkin Roll fragrance oil from Nature's Garden.  It worked really well, with  no signs of seizing or ricing.

My first of two batches turned out pretty well.

First of two Pumpkin Roll batches.  It almost smells good enough to eat!

I did kind of a layering/drop swirl kind of design, and I'm happy with the results with the exception of the coloring.  I decided at the last minute that my lighter color needed a little more titanium dioxide, and I didn't mix it in well enough (doh!).  You can see the bits of white that didn't fully incorporate into the soap, but I think it adds kind of a cool texture to the finished product.  If I didn't know I'd made a mistake, I might think it looked a little bit artsy.  Maybe?

Colorant faux pas.  I meant to do that...

Having panicked at the last second with the titanium dioxide, I realized when I went to do my second batch that I was out of white colorant.  My options were to wait until my shipment arrived in a week or so, use another color, or just go without.  I really wanted to do this batch of Pumpkin Roll, because I didn't want to move on to another project and leave the Pumpkin Roll fragrance oil sitting around. Let's be honest.  Pumpkin smells amazing, but it's very seasonal, and I didn't want it to be the last scent in my arsenal someday months from now.  So I decided to just go without the white and let the natural color of the soap be my second "color."

Second batch of Pumpkin Roll soap.

While I miss the contrast of the white color, I'm very pleased with how the swirls turned out.  I hope that the colors differentiate a bit more with some curing time.