Soaping

Here are some photos of my latest soaps.

I've made lemon sage poppyseed soap, oatmeal soap, and Crisco soap colored with cocoa powder. I made two patches of the Crisco - one half clear- half brown, the other entirely brown. The oatmeal and lemon sage poppyseed soaps are castile soaps (80% olive oil/20% coconut oil), while the Crisco soap is 50% olive oil/50% Crisco (soybean and palm oils).

My favorite is the oatmeal - it lathers well from coconut oil, but exfoliates (oatmeal) and is a gentle moisturizer (olive oil).

Any suggestions for the next batch?

Adventures in Soapmaking

I have been on a kick to make soap for a little while now. I found a great recipe on the internet for Basic Castile Soap. After reading about how difficult it is to obtain lye for soapmaking, I was worried my soap plans would not happen. Apparently, lye is used in methampetamine making also - a less frontier/simple living purpose than soap - so stores have taken it off the shelves along with Sudafed. However, Lowe's did happen to have some, so I bought that, along with olive oil, a soup toureen, wooden spoons, rubber gloves, and a scale. I gathered up all my materials in the kitchen. Wearing my biggest, craziest sunglasses and some stylish rubber gloves as protection, I was ready.

I added the carefully measured lye to water in a designated plastic pitcher, which heated up from the chemical reaction. Once it had cooled back down, I added it to a pot of heated oil and stirred and stirred (45 minutes!) and then added the newly formed soap to some molds (yogurt cups and a plastic food container).

I waited a couple of days and then exposed the soap to the air, which made it harden. I am still in the process of curing the soap, where you let it dry and harden for a week up to 2 months. By photos of the final product, you can see that I am still experimenting with when to cut the bars of soap and what kind of molds to use. In the future, I hope to add oatmeal and honey and other goodies to the soap and experiment with different oils and fats in the recipe. Castile soap is supposedly highly moisturizing, but doesn't lather much. Adding some coconut oil should change that up nicely.