Lemon Cake Soap

My friends and family know that I am not  much of a fan of sweets. I could go a lifetime without a cake, but if you ask me to spend a week without any meat, that would definitely be a big problem for me. I believe most of the readers here will agree that showering with a steak scented soap is not really a synonym for a pleasant experience, although I've seen some people offering even that kind of products. I just never seen or heard anyone actually using them.

Lemon Cake

On the other hand, bakery scented bath and body products have a huge base of fans. Everything sweet, juicy, fruity, that reminds with fragrance, colors and shape on some kind of a bakery sweet, has its audience nowadays. The most prominent example of this trend is without any doubt, chocolate. People can really go crazy over chocolate. Now, I have made chocolate scented soap couple of times before, and it was fairly popular among my crowd, although not that much as Milky Way, my milk, honey and oatmeal scented soap. Personally, I am first and foremost, a big fan of floral scents although I enjoy fragrances from all categories if they are skilfully blended and balanced.

There are only few, very specific sweet treats that I like to indulge myself with from time to time. For example, I really like lemon cheesecake. It is very easy to make and so far as I could see, everyone loves cheesecake. I prefer lemon cheesecake above other variations, because I love that juicy, sour taste that breaks the sweetness of the cake. Well, actually, I also love lemons in general. Somehow, their smell, color and taste has very uplifting and positive effect on my mood. Sicilian lemons were the inspiration behind my Crispy Clean soap few months ago.
I have a list with several soap ideas, and the time has come to try my version of a lemon cake soap.

Since it was my first time working with three completely new and different fragrances, I decided to go with a tried and true recipe with cocoa and shea butter in order to minimize possibilities for unpleasant surprises.

The bottom layer is scented with a luscious, sweet and buttery fragrance and well, I just had to add a pinch of oatmeal to it. Haven't I already told you how I love oatmeal? Here, I just wanted to add that special touch of a crumbly crust. I did expect strong discoloration, but decided nevertheless to leave it be and not to add vanilla stabilizer. Furthermore, it gives a nice color contrast to the upper layer. Here you see a photo after cutting and the upper photo is taken about two weeks in the curing time.

The upper layer is scented with two different lemon-bakery kind of fragrance oils. I deliberately choose two fragrances as I wished to avoid the overly sweet and sugary smell, but also to mellow down bitter and sour notes that sometimes are too sharp and have a not so desirable reminiscence of a toilet cleaner.













Unfortunately, I never seem to have an appropriate light here during the winter time, so all the photos tend to have a small bluish hue, but I hope that you can see the contrast between the basic ivory filling and light yellow swirl droppings inside. I didn't want to make a classic swirl, but rather to achieve a look that would look like a generous droppings of lemon syrup in the fluffy cheese cream. This time, I opted not to make fancy tops like I usually do, as I thought it wouldn't fit to the theme. I left the top just a bit swirled and uneven, as I do when I make my proper lemon cheesecake.

Well, this soap is yet to prove himself with the audience, but somehow I fell it won't be so difficult.
I called it Lemon Cake, which is simpler and shorter. I found out that nobody really likes to have to read or remember complicated names of bath and body products. And it fits better to my label too. :)

Let me know what you think if you try this soap, I like to hear feedback on my products. I still did not decide if this one is going to be in my regular line or I am going to offer it only as a limited edition special, but if you really like it, it may stick around for longer.