What soap recipe do you use?

I have written a few posts about soapmaking and I thought I would put all the recipes I use in the one post for anyone who would like to try them out and also for myself when I have all my oils and lye sitting on the kitchen bench and I can't find the recipe! Of course, that never happens to anyone else does it?



The recipe for the first batch of soap I made was taken from Rhonda Hetzel's book Down to Earth. This recipe makes 12 big blocks.

PURE SOAP RECIPE

• 600g rice bran oil
• 440g coconut oil
• 460g olive oil
• 570 ml rainwater
• 213g caustic soda

You can find Rhonda's detailed soap making tutorial here if you haven't read it before. You can read all her posts on making soap on this page if you would like to read some of the older posts. Rhonda mentions in her book that the best way to mix the soap is with a stick blender rather than using an electric hand beater.  

As coconut oil is fairly expensive you can replace it with copha which is solidified coconut oil so the second recipe I used included copha.

SOAP WITH COPHA

• 600g rice bran oil
• 460g olive oil
• 440g copha
• 570 mls water
• 213g caustic soda

SOAP WITH CALENDULA INFUSED OLIVE OIL

Lately I have been experimenting with drying calendula petals and then putting them in olive oil and leaving the bottle in a sunny place for a while to infuse the oil. I then made the soap using the recipe above and just replaced the olive oil with the calendula infused oil.





CALENDULA INFUSED OIL SOAP WITH CAROTINO OIL

I wanted to experiment with using carotino oil to see if I could get the soap to take on an orange colour but didn't want to take the chance of ruining a large batch so used the following recipe which one of the lovely Down to Earth forum members worked out for me using a soap calculator.

• 175g rice bran oil
• 175g carotino oil
• 1T castor oil
• 150g copha
• 250g calendula infused olive oil
• 103g caustic soda
• 285g water



ON MY 'TO DO' LIST:

One of the ladies who comes to our Simple Living Toowoomba group's morning tea and swap brought along some vanilla chai goats milk soap which was just lovely to use.

VANILLA CHAI GOAT'S MILK SOAP

• 175g goats milk
• 200g spring water
• 150g caustic soda
• 500g olive oil
• 400g coconut oil
• 100g palm oil

The recipe has 15 ml vanilla essential oil and 5 ml vetivert essential oil but she used 10 ml of vanilla chai fragrance oil instead.

1. Pour the caustic soda into the milky water and stir until it is completely dissolved. Leave the cup or jug in the iced water to cool, stirring occasionally.
2. Melt the olive, coconut and palm oils together in a large stainless steel pan over a low heat until both the oils and the lye reach 50 degrees Celsius.
3. Remove the pan from the heat and carefully stir in the milky lye. Use a slotted spoon to stir and mix the soap. Continue stirring until the soap thickens and traces. The soap may give off an ammonia-like aroma but don't worry as this unpleasant scent will fade and disappear.
4. When the soap has traced stir in the essential oils and pour into moulds.
5. Cover the moulds with an old blanket and leave for a couple of days until the soap has completely cooled.
6. Remove the soap from the moulds and cut into bars. Leave somewhere cool and airy to harden and mature for 4-6 weeks.

She freezes the goat's milk and lets it thaw slightly so that it is still icy before using it instead of putting it into a jug of iced water.



CASTILE BUBBLES

• 950g olive oil
• 50g castor oil
• 124g caustic soda
• 250g water

With this soap the temperature needs to be brought to 40 degrees Celsius.

Hopefully I will get around to making the soaps on my 'To Do' list in the next few months. 

Update 19/1/15: GOAT'S MILK SOAP

As I have mentioned before these are my soap moulds. The silicone ones are from The Reject Shop.

This mould and the one in the next photo are from Aussie Soap Supplies. The soap made in this one can be seen in the top two photos.

I put these moulds into the freezer for an hour or so before trying to get the soap out as, if you don't, the soap will be very hard to get out and you could damage your mould like I almost did. It would have been helpful if I had read the instructions which came with the moulds before I made the soap. The soap in the silicone moulds comes out really easily without having to freeze them beforehand.

You can experiment with putting your soap into different containers like I did with my last batch when I lined an EasiYo container with bubble wrap to get the effect of beeswax. It is all a bit of fun and some soap batches will look better than others but it still works the same despite the appearance and unless you want to give the soap as a gift or sell it, I am sure that family members wouldn't really care if it was an odd shape. :-)

However, if you live in Australia and want to sell your soap, I believe that you have to get a licence to do so. I certainly won't be going down that road but others might like to in the future.

So, if you make your own soap what recipe do you use? Do you like to make fancy soap or prefer to keep it simple?