This month the Soap challenge club came up with something a little different. Instead of some sort of fancy design, exotic oil, or bright color, all we had to do was get someone else to soap with us. Sounds easy right, yeah not so much. See the thing is, most people think making soap is a really hard, tedious and time consuming endeavor, all things the general population tends to avoid. I had to have a plan, a good plan, the plan of all plans in order to get someone to do this with me.
So one night, I walked into the kitchen and said to my family, "I need a volunteer for my soap challenge this month. You have to make soap with me." I got the blank stare and then the 'what the hell do you mean, make soap?' look. I explained the challenge and added that it wasn't going to be a fancy soap, just a soap. Finally my little sister took the bait, then I hit her with the fact that she actually had to choose what kind of soap she wanted. A few days later, she came back with a list of things that threw me...Rosemary, Lavender, and oatmeal. Now it was my turn to give her the blank stare, like what the hell was I supposed to do with these things? My brain finally started working again, and I asked her what exactly she wanted to soap to do? Finally, she clarified that conditioning and bubbly was the main priority of this soap, it needed to smell like rosemary & lavender and had to have oatmeal in it. TO clarify, my sister has eczema, and while during the summer it's pretty easy to maintain, the cold drier months of autumn and winter tend to exacerbate the issue. She uses a Shea body butter that my middle sister makes for her, but wanted a soap that would also help her skin instead of drying it out and also have ingredients that she could read. Kinda like giving her skin a double whammy. Easy, right?
So off to the interwebs I went in search of a recipe that would deliver all the things my sister wanted, and I actually found it! At lovinsoap.com, now I know that it is missing some things that she wanted, but I had the backbone that I needed to get started and weak along the way. So, continue reading if you want to find out how Chef Thuglife 🍍, made soap.
I used the basic percentages and oils that Amanda laid out for the soap:
Avocado Oil - 15% Castor Oil - 10%
Coconut Oil - 30% Olive Oil - 45%
This cocktail (can I call it that?), actually made an extremely cleansing (20 out of 22) & moisturizing (60 out of 69) bar of soap (some thing I've been striving for for months!) with a decent amount of bubble to it (29 out of 46), so a big thank you to Amanda. I wanted it a little bit more creamy and conditioning and chose to go with the goat's milk but omit the honey, didn't want to deal with acceleration this go round. Well, as we all know, I never have everything I need when I need it and am always strapped for cash. So guess what I was out of...goat's milk. How the hell am I supposed to make extra creamy soap without the creaminess of that oh so special milk? Luckily, I had coconut milk, not a true milk but VERY creamy and high in fat, just what I needed. The final recipe was the above oils and percentages along with a 1:1 substitution of coconut milk for water and 1 Tbs. of whole oatmeal (she didn't want it ground up) and a ½oz total of rosemary and lavender essential oils.
*SN: We only made a 1lb batch of soap. Didn't want to overwhelm her.
1. Since my sister is a trained chef that is just started her own catering company (insert shameless plug) weighing out her oils was really fun to watch. She is worse than me about getting it absolutely exact.
2. I loaned her my gloves to weigh out the lye, but she wasn't phased.
3. She then had to post it all on the instagram.
4. We mixed the cooled milk and lye together and then the waiting began. I didn't want to risk soaping hot, just in-case the coconut milk had a high sugar count (I just wasn't sure). So we let it cool to about 100℉, we also learned that lye causes the milk to go to this soft solid stage that was really weird (and I, of course, didn't take a picture), but didn't seem to affect the soaping outcome.
5. Then it was time to mix (cue suspenseful music). She poured the oil into the lye and then used one of her favorite kitchen tools, the immersion blender, to emulsify her soap. Her analogy was to compare it to making mayonnaise (ugh, chefs).
6. We went to a medium trace. I wasn't trying to create a swirl or do anything fancy, so we didn't have to worry about it setting up on us. Once we hit the level of trace we wanted, the oats were added in and stirred everything at this point. While we didn't mind a little thickness, lumpy porridge was not the goal. We then added the rosemary and lavender essential oils to the party (forgot to take a picture, mostly because intense math was being done). My sister wanted more rosemary than lavender scent in her soap and we had to break up the oils into ⅔ and ⅓, to keep everything right.
7. Time to pour! and pour she did...nothing was missed, she got every drop.
8. Earlier I had picked a few springs from my rosemary and lavender bushes to maybe add a little decoration.
10. Smile for the camera! and put to set. She didn't want it to go through gel phase, so it was put in a cool place overnight.
And now the finished product of Rosemary & Lavender Oat Soap:
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| This soap came out very white without adding any Titanium Dioxide |