Buttermilk, Carrot, and Honey Soap

I’m the first to admit that I love synthetic fragrances. I feel they give a depth and roundness that essential oils just can’t offer, and I use them in nearly all of my soaps.

But sometimes, I want a truly natural soap – something wholesome and pure, and free from anything artificial*. My favourite natural soap is carrot and buttermilk with avocado oil and honey.

I start with a lye solution made with 100% carrot juice. The base recipe is

55% Olive oil
20% Coconut oil
25% Avocado oil

After the soap has cooked, I add a slurry of unrefined avocado oil, buttermilk powder, and honey before pouring the soap into the moulds. I don’t add any fragrance to this soap, but a blend of palmarosa, howood, and lavender would be lovely.

*The photo I’ve posted is a slight cheat as I did add a tiny bit of green colorant to the batch.

Natural Handmade Soaps from Redgum

We soap makers can be a cynical bunch. Mostly because we’ve seen it all – false claims about soap, ingredients, and even soap maker qualifications - which is why I find Redgum Soaps a real breath of fresh air. The site does exactly what it says on the tin – provides real, honest natural soaps that are free from anything synthetic. All of the soaps are handmade by Vicki, and she only uses natural ingredients ‘free from preservatives, petrochemicals, artificial fragrances and colours, and other synthetic additives.’ Vicki takes her care and concern for the environment one step further by using minimal packaging. Her line is perfect for anyone with sensitive skin, and for those who care about the environment.

Pure, simple, elegant soaps. Please give Vicki’s site a look – and don’t forget to check out her blog while you’re there.

A Plug for Longcroft Soap Company

My little soap company is featured in The Independent's Sunday magazine 'The New Review' today. It was just a little blurb about my Wee Choccy Poke Bath Soaks, but it's exciting nonetheless. :)

Sometimes I’m in the mood for soapy eye candy, and Nicole of My Lavender Fair never fails to deliver. Nicole is a true artisan soapmaker. Quality and care go into every bar she makes, and her beautiful creations are always in demand.

I like the look of the ‘Spice Trader’. With notes of cinnamon, clove, frankincense and myrrh, this comforting bar warms the senses. Visually, it’s a stunner. The layering is gorgeous, and the cocoa powder stripe in between is a stylish, polished touch.

‘Sunflowers’ is another favourite. I love the wholesomeness of this soap, and the calendula petals give it an elegant rustic appeal.



If you enjoy looking at pretty soaps as much as I do, please stop by My Lavender Fair. And while you’re there, treat yourself to one of Nicole’s little works of art.

Spoil Yourself

Making your own soap means you can occasionally (or in my case, often) spoil yourself with a decadent bar of soap. I have a couple of recipes that I make only for myself, and I pack them full of luxury ingredients. Some of these ingredients are a little pricey, but hey – everyone deserves nice things!

Today I'm sharing my recipe for facial soap. It costs a bit more to make than the average soap, but it's worth every penny. When I think of the money spent every year on expensive creams and lotions for the face, it's much easier to justify. With this soap, you know exactly what you're getting -- wholesome, pure ingredients with proven skin care benefits.

Luxury Facial Soap

40% Olive
20% Coconut
20% Kokum Butter
10% Hazelnut
10% Macadamia

This formula is brilliant on its own, but I like to add one last luxurious touch. For every 500g of base oil, I add 10g of olive squalane. This, of course, goes in after the soap is cooked so that it isn’t compromised in any way. It’s hard to believe that such a tiny amount of squalane would make a difference, but it does. The soap gently cleanses the skin and doesn’t leave it the least bit tight or dry.

I use the hot process method to make this soap, but it can easily be made as cold process. Just add the squalane at the last possible minute before pouring into the mould.

Shaving Soap with Kaolin

Shaving soap is a wonderful product and very easy to make. You don’t need any specialist equipment – just use a washed and dried Pringle’s can as your mould and then cut the soap into discs.

The recipe I use for shaving soap is pretty basic:

45% Olive
25% Coconut
10% Castor
10% Hazelnut or Avocado
10% Cocoa Butter
2t white kaolin for every 500g of base oils

This soap has a quick, fluffy lather that’s very stable and will last throughout the shave. It’s also gentle and conditioning, and won’t strip the skin.

The magic ingredient in this soap is the kaolin. It acts sort of like ball bearings in the lather, adding slip and glide so that the razor passes easily over the skin. It also helps to thicken the lather so that it blankets the skin better.

You can easily tweak this recipe to create some wonderful variations. Try subbing some of your recipe’s water with aloe vera for a soothing soap. Honey also makes a great addition, as do milk powders – especially butter powder since it adds such a luxurious creaminess to the lather.

Shaving soap is great on so many levels. It’s easy and pleasant to use. There is no wasteful packaging, as you can simply pop it into a mug for use. Unlike aerosol shaving foam, shaving soap is environmentally friendly. And let’s face it, those little brushes are a hoot!

Charcoal Soap

I’ve never been a fan of fussy soaps, and this is simplicity at its best – Mi Spa’s Bamboo Charcoal Soap. This elegant soap cleanses the skin while gently exfoliating and detoxifying. Perfection!

Long used as a cosmetic ingredient in Japan, charcoal is carbon rich and wonderful for oily skin. Its tiny micro-porous particles gently stimulate the skin while removing dead cells.

Utility Soap

Drastic measures for dirty hands...

My neighbour at work owns a garage and works on cars all day. As you can imagine, his hands get pretty grimy, so he asked me to come up with something to help. My solution was a 100% babassu oil soap with cornmeal, and it works well. I superfatted it to 15%, but I think you could go as high as 20%.

Babassu can be pricey and difficult to find, but any oil high in lauric acid (such as coconut or palm kernel) can easily be substituted. Cornmeal isn't essential either -- any scrubby substance will do. You could try pumice, finely ground almond or walnut shells, or even powdered fruit rinds.

The lather from a soap this high in lauric acid is amazing, and the cornmeal really ferrets out stubborn dirt. Coupled with a nice shea butter cream or lotion bar, it would make a great gift for the gardener on your Christmas list.

Felted Soaps

How cute is this?



Felted soap made by two lovely ladies in Germany and available at einfach seife. Gabi, who makes the soaps inside the felt, is a very talented soap maker. I have used her soaps for years and I’ve loved every bar I’ve tried. Simone, a true artist, does the felting and ensures each soap is its own little work of art.

I love them!

Superfatting after the Cook

Superfatting, or adding oils or butters which remain unsaponified, is a great way to add extra conditioning properties to your soaps. Just a small amount can make a huge difference to the quality of the finished bars.

With hot process, I like to do my superfatting at the end of the cooking process to ensure my soaps get the most benefit. By adding the extra oils after the soap has completely saponified, they never come into contact with lye. The result is a pure superfat that doesn’t affect the quality of the added oil or butter.

My favourite oil for superfatting is jojoba, and I add it to my batch at 3%. Keeping the superfat below 5% ensures that the extra oil doesn’t compromise the lather. Cocoa butter is another ingredient I used for superfatting, and I find adding it at 3% adds hardness as well as extra conditioning to the finished soap.

Superfatting doesn’t have to be done with expensive oils and butters. Rapeseed or olive can add a luxurious feel to your soaps.

Living Without Palm Oil

As a soap-making staple, palm oil has never impressed me. I’ve tried it in a few recipes, but never liked it enough to add it to my permanent list of soaping oils. Those have remained virtually unchanged since I began making soap – olive, coconut, and avocado.

I’m often asked about the hardness of a bar made with olive, coconut, and avocado, and I am honest when I say that those three oils don’t make the hardest bar of soap I’ve ever tried. They do make for a conditioning bar, and for me, this is the most important criteria.

But sometimes a hard bar of soap is essential. Beeswax can help harden a bar, but I’ve never had much success with it. I find it reduces lather and can give the soap a waxy feel. Olive wax is a better alternative, but it can be difficult to find. It’s much easier for me to make couple of quick substitutions with easily obtainable ingredients to produce a very hard bar of soap without the inclusion of palm or even animal fats.

My favourite recipe for hard soap is:

50% Olive
25% Coconut
15% Shea Butter
10% Avocado

The above make a hard, mild bar that is luxurious and easy to produce. It can be slightly expensive, so I’ll include a recipe that is a bit more cost effective as well:

50% Olive
25% Coconut
15% Cocoa Butter
10% Rapeseed (canola)

This bar is not too expensive to produce and is just as hard as any palm oil soap.

If you are looking for a suitable alternative to palm without the use of animal fats, I would encourage you to give these recipes a go. And please let me know what you think!

Welcome Macsoapy!

I am delighted to announce the grand opening of Gracefruit.com’s newest European distributor. Joining Austria's Kosmetikmacherei in serving the European market is Macsoapy, Germany's only official supplier of genuine Gracefruit fragrance oils. It's an honour to work with both Kosmetikmacherei and Macsoapy. I'm certain they'll both go from strength to strength as they continue to deliver the finest quality and best service to customers across Europe.

Soaping with Alcohol

I had an enquiry from a lovely soapmaker about soaping with whisky. I promised her detailed instructions on how I make boozy soaps, so I thought I’d share with everyone.

Including spirits in soap can be tricky, but using the hot process method, it’s quite simple – but it does take nerves of steel. The soap will go through some weird stages once the alcohol is added, and it may appear the batch is ruined. Never fear, though. Hot Process is the most forgiving method, and you’ll end up with great soap.

This method will work with any alcohol except beer, fizzy wine, or any other carbonated beverage.

My alcohol of choice is whisky, but you may use any spirit you like. To avoid soft soap, simply treat is as part of your water, but don’t mix it with the caustic soda or you’ll have a bubbling, caustic mess and very dangerous fumes.

Start by reducing your water by 25% and then mix up your lye solution as you normally would. In a separate container, weigh out enough whisky to make up for the 25% water you left out. Add the reduced-water lye solution to your oils and blend until medium trace. Now add your whisky.

The soap will seize immediately and probably separate as well. Don’t panic! Just use your stick blender to bring it back together. And don’t worry if your soap looks lumpy at this point. It will be smooth and gorgeous once it’s finished cooking. Allow it to cook as normal, but do keep an eye on it. I find that I need to cook mine a few minutes longer when I use whisky.

Once the soap has gelled, do a zap test. Be sure to rub the soap between your fingers to cool it before touching it to your tongue. And remember – if the soap feels at all gritty, don’t taste it! Smooth, waxy soap almost never zaps. Once you’re confident the soap has finished cooking, add your colours, fragrance, additives, etc as usual.

Alcohol soaps are fun to make, and they have great label appeal. My whisky soaps sell well for me, but you might like to use your own regional spirits in your soap.

Slurries for Soap

I love milk soaps. My favourite at the moment are butter soaps, but I have an affection for sheep’s milk and buttermilk soaps as well. Nothing beats a milk soap for mildness, and the dense, creamy lather they produce is lovely on the skin.

Milk soaps can be tricky to make, even for an experienced soap maker. Caustic soda can do odd things to dairy products like cause them to curdle, separate, and give off a smell that isn’t unlike the monkey cage at the zoo. While the heavy ammonia scent does fade, curdling and separation are problems that usually result in a failed batch of soap.

To get around these issues, I like to make milk soaps using the hot process method, and I only use powdered milks. I have found there is no appreciable difference between fresh or powdered in the finished soaps, and for my purposes, powdered works much better. The secret is in the slurry.

To make a slurry, I use a couple of tablespoons of oil, either reserved from my batch or added as a superfat. This oil is mixed with the milk powder and stirred to a thin paste. Once this paste is completely smooth with no lumps, the slurry is ready. I add the slurry to the soap after it’s been completely cooked and cooled just slightly. It does take a good bit of stirring, but the end result is well worth the effort.

Making milk soaps this way helps avoid most of the major pitfalls. Because the soap is completely saponified, the milk and caustic soda never meet, so the curdling, separating, and horrible smell don’t occur. But this doesn’t mean this method is foolproof. I have burned the milk by adding it while the soap was still too hot, so allowing the soap to cool slightly is imperative.

Slurries aren’t just limited to milk powders. They can be made with honey, oats, herbs, extracts, or anything you don’t want compromised by caustic, raw soap. I have made oat milk slurries with whisky, coconut milk slurries with carrot, and buttermilk slurries with heather honey. And each time, the soap turned out beautifully. When it comes to hot process soap, slurries are the way forward.

Olive Wax in Soap

I’m in the process of testing some exciting new soap-making ingredients. Today I worked with olive wax – a by-product of the olive oil industry. It’s similar to beeswax, but has a slightly lower melting point. It’s also a vegan product, which might make it attractive to soap and cosmetics makers who cater to that market.

Since giving up palm oil, I have been searching for a way to make my soap harder. Sodium lactate has helped some, but I still needed something to firm up the soap a bit more. Beeswax at 2% helped a great deal, but it made the bars feel a bit waxy and seemed to compromise the lather quantity and stability. I understand that it can also speed trace to an unmanageable level, which makes it less than ideal for highly-decorative soaps.

Olive wax, on the other hand, does not appear to accelerate trace. It did slightly alter the lather by making the bubbles smaller, but it did not affect the stability. The conditioning properties of the soap have also remained unaffected and there is no waxy residue left on the skin – even with the olive wax included at 6% in my soap recipe. Overall, I am extremely impressed with its performance.

Aside from olive wax’s application in soap, it may also be used in cosmetics as a thickener. It makes a wonderful replacement for beeswax in products like lip balm, and even more importantly, can replace petro-chemical products such as paraffin.

Over the coming weeks, I will be testing other waxes like apricot wax, jojoba wax, avocado wax, and fruit waxes extracted from citrus peels. If they perform as well as the olive wax, I’ll definitely be incorporating them into my product line and adding them to the gracefruit.com site.

Butter Powder in Soap

When it comes to additives in soap, I tend to be a bit skeptical as there are very few additives I feel make a huge difference to the final bars. There are three I use religiously – silk for lather texture, sugar for lather volume, and sodium lactate for bar hardness. These additives go into every batch of soap I make.

Recently, I’ve discovered another additive that is just as impressive – butter powder – unsalted, spray-dried butter powder to be exact. It makes the creamiest, most luxurious bar I’ve ever tried.

Butter powder contains a whopping 73% fat, three times the amount of sheep’s or cow’s milk powder. Because the milk is in powder form and not liquid, the fat does not need to be taken into account for saponification purposes, meaning the bar is super-fatted (or as I like to say ‘ultra-fatted’) without compromising the recipe or the final bars of soap.

The method I use for adding milk powders to soaps is slightly different than most. I never reconstitute the milk, but simply make a thin paste (or slurry) with the milk powder and a few teaspoons of the oils from my recipe. When making CP, I add this mixture at trace, just before adding the fragrance. When making HP, it goes in a few minutes after the soap has been removed from the heat and allowed to cool slightly. Doing it this way gives the soap all of the benefits of milk without the pitfalls of off-smells and the possibility of rancidity.

So will butter powder join silk, sugar, and sodium lactate as a must-have additive? Probably not. In this case, I’ll continue to give my customers a choice and perhaps offer one or two soaps with butter powder. I will, however, be including it in every batch I make for myself. I won’t be going without this little luxury in the future.

Giving up Palm

One of my resolutions for the New Year is to stop using palm and palm kernel oil in my soaps. I actually gave up using it a few months ago, but New Year's Eve seems the perfect time to mention it. Palm oil production is not a sustainable industry, and I cannot justify wrecking valuable farm land for the sake of a few pence per bar while there are people in the world going hungry. The cost to the environment and humans is too great.

I only began using palm at in February of last year. It was a cheap and easy way to add bulk and hardness to my soaps. But have come back to my original recipe of olive, avocado, and coconut. I’ve never found a recipe I like more than my three-oil workhorse. Hazelnut oil is another favourite, and I’ve been subbing it for the avocado in a few recipes with marvellous results. For soap making, giving up palm is painless.

Giving up palm kernel oil will be even easier, since I’ve never cared for it at all. I know a lot of soap makers believe it’s milder than coconut oil, but aside from opinions, I’ve never seen any evidence of this. Palm kernel is expensive and difficult to work with due to its hardness. Scooping it out of the pail requires a mallet and chisel, and I just don’t have the time or energy. I’ll happily stick with coconut oil because it’s never let me down. Coconut oil’s ‘bad’ reputation seems to be down to a quote in an old soap-making book. Of course, this is the same book that advised soap makers to waste valuable ingredients by not scraping down the sides of their soap pans when pouring raw soap into the mold, so questioning the validity of the coconut oil claim isn’t silly.

Sadly, not every soap maker is willing to give up palm, and for this reason, I will have to continue using it for testing fragrance oils. Palm can be a bit brutal on fragrance, and without using it for testing, I can’t assure my fragrance oil customers that the oils they’re buying will perform well enough in any recipe. Palm also allows me to avoid using tallow or lard and still give accurate results. The good news is that I know of a supplier who sells fairly-traded, sustainable palm oil, and while it’s more than double the price of regular palm, I can use it without guilt pangs.

Hot Process Hints

For me, the hot process method is the quickest and easiest way to make soap. There is very little room for error and the soap turns out great 99% of the time. Still, there is that 1%, so I thought I'd try to shed some light on some common HP problems and how to easily solve them.

By no means is this a comprehensive list, but hopefully it will help you if you’re having trouble with your HP. Please bear in mind that my observations take into account that the recipe being used isn't flawed and that the equipment used (slow cooker, double boiler, oven, etc) is in good working order.

1. My soap is really thick and I have trouble getting it into the mold.

This is probably the most common problem with making HP soap. Fortunately, it's also the easiest to solve. Thick soap is usually caused by a lack of water, so it's important never to do a water discount with HP. In fact, it's a good idea to add an additional 5-10% to the recommended full water amount. I wouldn't suggest going over 10% as the extra evaporation while the soap cures can cause the sliced bars to warp or bend. The extra water may be added to the lye solution or even to the finished soap before it goes into the mold. I have 'thinned' out many a batch of thick soap by adding a small amount of hot water at the end of the cook, but it does require careful and lengthy stirring to fully incorporate into the soap.

In addition to extra water, there are a couple of additives that can help keep the soap more fluid. Adding 3-5% sugar to the lye solution before the lye is added can help keep the soap from getting too thick. It is imperative that all of the sugar is dissolved before the lye goes in or you'll end up with a caustic boiled sweet! Sodium lactate is another additive that can keep soap fluid, however, add no more than 5% or the soap can become brittle. Sodium lactate is a forgiving ingredient and may be added at any time during the soap making process. I prefer adding it at trace.

2. My soap has lumpy bits in it.

When I first started making HP, I had the lumpiest soap ever. Even the cured bars showed the tell-tale white spots. There are two main reasons for hard lumps in soap -- over-heating and over-cooking. In my experience, HP should never be brought to a temperature over 140F (60C). Doing so causes the indirect heat source to become more direct as the sides of the pot or slow cooker heat up enough to over-cook or burn the soap. The hot sides contact the soap, causing bits to over-heat and harden. While harmless, these hard bits will affect the look of the finished soap.

As with cooking soap at too high a temperature, cooking it too long will also cause lumps. A longer cook time means more evaporation -- and evaporation means harder, thicker soap. As the soap continues to over-cook, the soap will begin to form hard lumps. I have rarely had a batch of soap of any size which required cooking for more than 45 minutes.

3. My soap zaps!

Barring any mistakes with the recipe, zapping soap is undercooked. To avoid a heat or lye burn, soap shouldn't be zap tested (touching a small amount of cooked soap to the tongue) at all without meeting a few criteria first:

- Soap should be at the gel stage and there should be no parts of the soap that are not translucent. If the soap resembles cake batter in any way, do not touch it.

- Soap should be cooled before testing. While 140F isn't boiling, it can still burn.

- Soap should be rubbed between the fingers before testing. If the soap feels waxy and smooth, it's fairly safe to test, but if there are any rough or gritty bits, it should not be touched to the tongue.

If you’ve met the criteria and the soap zaps, simply cook it a bit longer.

These tips won’t solve every problem you might encounter with HP, but hopefully they’ll help you achieve more trouble free batches. If you have any hints you’d like to add, please leave me a comment. My hope is that by sharing, we can make HP a nearly fool-proof method!

Sodium Lactate

Sodium lactate is an ingredient I can't do without. The tiniest amount (I get by with 2%) makes such a difference in the fluidity and hardness of hot process soap. Having a fluid HP makes it much easier to get into the molds. A quick hardening makes it easier to get back out.

Sodium lactate is also a very forgiving ingredient. I've added it at just about every possible stage of the soap making process and it works every time. I've also used it in both the powder and liquid forms, again with consistent success. The only time I've ever had a problem with sodium lactate is when I've added too much. Anything at or above 5% makes my soap crumble and break.

For best results, I prefer to make my own solution. To make this solution, I weigh out sodium lactate powder equal to 2% of my batch weight (usually 50g) and then multiply the amount by 5 to figure out how much water I'll need (250g). I subtract the water from my total recipe, mix it with the powder and add it back to the soap at a light-to-medium trace. A stick blender is very handy for getting it to incorporate. I always get soap that will easily sieve through a slotted spoon and then harden up to candle-wax consistency within a few hours.

If you enjoy making hot process soap, I can't recommend sodium lactate enough. Even a small amount in a weak solution turns out a great batch of soap.

Crock Pot Hot Process Soap Tutorial -- Photo Heavy!

Here are a few pictures to show what happens when I make CPHP. Your results may vary, though!

Please note that this tutorial is designed for those already familiar with cold process soap making.

Melt oils and mix up lye solution as you would with CP. You don’t have to worry about controlling the temperatures. Add the lye solution to the oils as soon as you’re confident the lye is completely dissolved. You can stick blend them together right in the crock pot:



After you’ve reached a nice, thick trace, put the lid on, check the crock pot is set to low, and entertain yourself for about a half an hour. Obsessive folk like me might return to the pot every five to ten minutes for a peek, but there probably won’t be much happening. After about thirty minutes (more or less, depending on your crock pot’s temperature), the edges will begin to gel:



Check back in about ten minutes and the gel will have spread from the edges toward the centre. I usually refer to this as ‘raw soap island surrounded by a gel ocean’. Unfortunately, on the day I decide to take photographs, we have ‘raw soap island being overrun by a gel tsunami’:



Five minutes later, raw soap island is gone:



It is at this time I remove the pot from the heat source and give a quick stir just to be sure the gel is complete. If it isn’t, you’ll find a chunk of lighter-coloured raw soap floating in the gel. If you still have raw soap, pop it back in the heat source and cook for another five to ten minutes. This one has completely gelled:



Now you can zap test the soap by taking a little bit out and rubbing it between your fingers to help it cool. It should feel waxy. Once the soap has cooled, lightly tap your tongue with it. If you get a sensation that feels like a 9-V battery, you have active lye in your soap and will need to cook it some more. If not, you can move on to the next step.

When making HP, I add my additives at the end of the cook to avoid having the kitchen smell like the monkey cage at the zoo. Any milks, honey, fruit or veggie purees, etc should go in after the cook. Oils and butters added after the cook will not be saponified, so you get all of their benefits. Today I’m superfatting with a bit of jojoba:



And now a lovely oakmoss fragrance goes in:



While you weren’t looking, I removed a cup or so of soap from the pot and dyed it green. This has been added back to the soap:



And lightly stirred to make an in-the-pot swirl:



And then spooned into the molds to cool:



When the soap has cooled, turn it out and you’re done!



Remember that any HP needs to cure for at least one week, preferably two. It’ll get harder and milder in this time.

Due to time constraints, I'm no longer able to support questions with regard to the tutorial. Thank you to everyone who has taken time to comment. I hope you'll continue to visit!