Another Day, Another Soap

[donotprint] While our basic soap is still curing, Dave and I decided to make another batch of cold process soap. With one success under our belt, we ventured away from the basic bar to add some of our favorite ingredients. This is our new soap. [/donotprint]

Peppermint Oatmeal Honey Soap

Peppermint Oatmeal Honey[print_link]

(Adapted from soap-making essentials.com)

Shea Butter – 90 grams

Coconut Oil – 270 grams

Olive Oil – 360 grams

Palm Oil – 180 grams

Distilled Water – 326 grams

Lye – 124 grams

1 tablespoon of honey (warmed and added to a small amount of the distilled water, then added to the lye water once the lye water has cooled so both liquids are about the same temperature.)

1/4 cup of ground oats (added at trace)

1 teaspoon of peppermint essential oil (added at trace)

1 1/2 teaspoons grapefruit extract for preservative (add to base oils)

Makes 2 lbs – 10 bars

Please go HERE for the actual cold process tutorial. I would recommend printing it out so you can work from it as you are making soap. As I’ve mentioned before, there are a lot of great soap-making resources online, but this site is my favorite. Since I changed her basic recipe, I also consulted our two books: Soap Naturally and The Natural Soap Book to make sure I didn’t use too much honey for this recipe.

After we poured the soap in the mold, we sprinkled on whole oats. This gives the soap a neat look and is also good for exfoliation. However, I’m not sure I like the way the sides of the bars look. These bars were softer and easier to cut than the basic bars, but due to the whole oats on top we didn’t get a clean cut.  I think we’d leave them off the top next time. The honey gives the bars a warm color and the oatmeal adds a nice speckled effect.

We added the honey, as noted above, by warming it and mixing it with a little of the distilled water, then after the lye water and honey water cooled down to about the same temperature we added them together. The site I recommend adds her honey at trace. In the Soap Naturally she recommends adding it with the lye water. She warns that added to trace or with the oils, the honey may not get completely integrated into the soap. While curing it will sweat dark brown droplets of watery honey. This doesn’t affect the quality of the soap, but might make it prone to rancidity.

The total time to make the soap is an hour. I spend about an hour setting up, getting everything ready so once we start we don’t have to stop. Then it takes about a half hour for cleanup of the kitchen.

These bars smell so good!  Now to wait 4-6 weeks!

Dave has requested our next bars involve chocolate. Stay tuned!