Well, I’ve been wanting to make this soap for quite a while. My friend Marsha is allergic to all nut oils so I’ve been itching to make some olive oil soap for her. In fact, my whole reason for infusing calendula flowers in the olive oil was for her soap. Anyway, last week I finally got up the nerve to make this soap and used my new silicone mold.
After all of my research, I failed to realize that I needed to not only leave this soap in the mold longer than 24 hours, but also I need to grease these molds. This is due to the high percentage of olive oil. As you see below, one soap came out perfect, the others I ended up piling the soap on top of the part of the soap that behaved!
But I know they will be fine. They just look a tad funky. Now they need to cure from 6 to 12 weeks, much longer than my normal 4 weeks. Some of the Calendula flowers left over from infusing were ground up and added to trace.
Here is my recipe. If you are not familiar with cold process soap making, check out this link for instructions.
Calendula Olive Oil Soap [print_link]
Calendula Infused Olive Oil – 765 grams (90%) or 27 oz
Castor Oil – 85 grams (10%) or 3 oz
Distilled Water – 281 grams or 10 oz
Lye – 107 grams or 4 oz
4 tablespoons of ground calendula flowers added to trace
This recipe is smaller than my other batches because I was using this new silicone mold. It turned out that this batch was still too large for that mold. I ended up pouring the remaining soap into a milk carton. I’ve given you percentages so you can make this to the size of batch you want to make. I also make my soap in grams because I feel it’s more accurate although a lot of soapers have success with ounces. Just do what makes you feel comfortable but be sure run any recipe through a soap calculator.
I’m looking forward to giving this to Marsha once it has cured. And now that I know that I need to grease the mold, I’ll try this again. But we’ve talked about our next soap adventure will either involve lard or cocoa and mango butters with mango fragrance oil. Fun!
It came out beautifully! Even the freaky looking ones are pretty cool 😀 They look like cupcakes. It will be beautiful to wash with I am sure! Too bad it needs to cure for so much longer.
I love Calendula soap.. a tip you may already now as far as getting soaps out of molds, is to pop them in the freezer for an hour, then they pop right out.
Wendy, I’ve read that but never tried it. Thanks. I’ll try that next time.
Kristina, They do kind of look like cupcakes. I am looking forward to trying them after they cure.
I think they look great, in fact I was like WOW, how did she do that. I thought it was on purpose. Yay for happy accidents!
Yep, Bobbie – after I did that I thought they kind of looked neat! Thanks for dropping by.
why did this soap have to cure longer than the other ones?
Vanessa, It takes longer because it is 90% olive oil and 10% castor oilwhich are not hard oils. Usually when you make soap, you use a hard oil with the olive oil such as palm. Because no hard oils were used, it takes longer to cure. I recommend beginner soapmakers to not make these bars. Instead, start with the basic three: olive, palm and coconut.
Hello…I just wanted to say, what a nice friend you are to make such a beautiful gift for your friend. I would like to know, what type of lather do you get from this type of bar? Also, I’m curious how an olive oil & shea butter blend would do? maybe with an ounce of castor oil? I hear it makes great bubbles. My main problem is, if there’s no thick, rich, lather nobody wants to use it around here! LOL. commercial soaps have brained washed people into thinking if it’s not full of thick, rich, lather it’s not cleaning/working..strange huh? Thanks so much! I just love your blog.
Robyn, With an olive oil soap you don’t get much of a lather. If you’ve not checked out my other soap recipes, please do. Some of them are listed at https://lyndaheines.blog/soap-etc/. I’ve not blogged about all of them but those are the best ones and you will see I’ve updated several of them. Also the goats milk soap are wonderful. We’ve used shea and also castor oil which is suppose to help with the bubbles. Most of our soaps (not the 100% olive oil soaps) give us lots of bubbles. Thanks for dropping by and commenting. So glad you are here!
I use the silicone molds all the time and I don’t grease them (even for olive oil soap) BUT you do need to leave them in longer. They just take longer to firm up and they’re fine. Olive oil soap definitely needs more time to cure. I’ve heard adding salt can help harden the bar faster, but instead, I’ve just used some coconut oil in the mix.
Maria, That was our very first olive oil soap three years ago. I did learn to let the soap sit in the molds for a week or at least until it firmed up. We found we didn’t really care for the 100% oo soaps as much as some of the others. If you are interested in some of the other soaps we’ve made over the past three years, click on https://lyndaheines.blog/soap-etc/soap-recipes/. We’ve never added salt either but coconut oil would be a great idea. Thanks for dropping by.
Did your friend like the soap and was it good for her allergies?
Susan, She liked it. See this post: https://lyndaheines.blog/2010/10/soap-6-olive-oil-update/ I made this without any nut oils since she’s allergic to all nuts. It doesn’t help her allergies. I was just wanting to be sure she didn’t break out from my soap. Thanks for dropping by.