Phases, heating and adding stuff to creams!

This that I'm sharing here with you is what I have learned recently. I am not claiming to be an expert, cause I am not! But, understanding some of these things have saved me from doing experiments that, while educational, would have been expensive things to throw out.

Heating my Phase A and Phase B

Phases

Ingredients have all different qualities. Some may disolve in water, other in oil, other may be impossible to disolve but may be dispersed; some ingredients are incompatible with others and may result in cheese looking recipes. The information I have found on these topics is so wide that I would never be able to share it all in here. But let's start with the basics!

There are usually three faces when creating a cream. Phase A and Phase B are water based and oil based (respectively). We include in these phases the ingredients that disolve in either water or oil (and that can be heated!!! Any ingredient that may not be heated has to be added in Phase C).

Phase A will always include water and ideally an ingredient to make it a gel that will eventualy hold much better the oil phase and other ingredients. I am experimenting with Xanthan Gum and Carbopol Ultrez 21 at the moment. In this phase we will also include glicerin (necessary to disolve the Xantahn Gum) and other active ingredients like Allantoin or Inuline.

Phase B includes the oils (which percentage depends on what we are creating) and the emulsifier as well as other co-emulsifiers that our recipe may require.

Phase C (or "cool down phase") should be at less than 45 degrees, or even less, maybe under 30 degrees. This is the time to add any active ingredients our recipe may ask for (panthenol, urea, proteins, anti-age stuff, etc) and the conservants and perfume.

Heating, Emulsifying and Cooling

Usually, but it obviously depends on what we are creating, we will heat up both phases A and B and once they are at 70 degrees we will combine them, adding the oily phase into the gellified water phase. Once combined they need to be mixed with a stick blender for a good few seconds in order to achieve emulsion. You can be sure this has happened when the mixture becomes white and kinda milky.

Then we must continue mixing, maybe with a spoon, until the mixture cools down. To speed up this process you can opt for a cold bath, which means putting our glass container with our precious mixture into a bigger container with some cold water. This way we can acelerate the process of cooling down of our cream and avoid spending hours mixing.

Once cold we can blend it again to make sure it's all properly incorporated.

This is the time many people recommend to check the PH. Depends on what ingredients you may be using in Phase A and B, but for example, Carbopol tends to be dense at ph 6, so before adding actives that may unbalance the ph and mess up te texture of the cream, it's a good idea to set it up at the desired ph.

Adding Phase C is easy, a good method is to add one by one the ingredients and mix after adding each of them to check the cream holds. The last step should be the conservant and perfume.

A final mix with the stick blender is recommended to incorporate everything perfectly.

Bubbles!

Bubbles are a bit of a problem and can be caused by using the stick blender. The blender should be completely immerse in the mixture (that's why it's easier to work with more than 100 gr) and we should move it without letting air enter. Once we start blending air we will only make bubbles!

Something interesting is that when we create the gel with Xanthan and, separatedly, with Carbopol, we can mix without worrying about bubbles (and there will be many!) cause they will dissapear during the emulsion.

No bubbles!