What do you do when you send The Mister to the store for some buttermilk to make soda bread and he comes back with a half gallon of the stinky stuff?
24 hours later and the Buttermilk soap smelled like.....nothing. It's unscented and that nasty burnt milk smell that came from the chemical reaction with the lye was gone. I was also very happy to see I didn't get a gel ring in the center that you can get with milk soaps if they get too hot. I even dared to add a dollop of honey so I was really taking a risk with the sugars heating up on me. I did keep the lye solution in an ice bath and soaped when it as at 56 degrees. I had my doubts but it seemed to have worked.
And......the Sludge soap seemed to have also turned out better than expected. The original Aleppo/Laurel Berry recipe calls for all soft oils but it takes a 6 month cure. This time around I used my regular hard butters and some extra hard kokum butter. It's already a rather hard bar so I'm hoping 6 weeks will be long enough.