I love to use coconut oil in just about every cosmetic product I make and soap is no exception. Up till now one of my favourite soap recipes is a 100% coconut oil soap with 20% superfatting. Its gorgeous because of the rich lather it has, but because of the high superfatting percentage it is not drying for the skin.
I like working with 100% coconut oil soap as it is a nice, white soap with an interesting texture and is very unique even when leaving it plain, without any colorants or other additives. The only issue with 100% coconut oil is that it reaches trace fast and can be a bit difficult to work with if you want to make a more complicated design in your soap. But recently I have managed to make a nice two coloured swirl soap without any trouble.
Once you cut your soap (and you should do this fairly fast with a 100% coconut oil soap - I cut mine after about 12 h) every bar of soap looks unique. I love how every single one of them looks!
The ingredients:
976 g coconut oil
143 g lye (NaOH)
390 g water
colorant and scent of your choice
Preparation:
To make this soap follow the typical procedure for making cold processed soap
- weight of the appropriate amount of lye and dissolve it in cold water (always add the lye to the water, not the other way around and remember to wear gloves, googles and long sleeves and to work in a well ventilated area!)
- weight of the coconut oil on a digital scale and melt in a pan
- once it is melted remove from the hot plate and leave to cool down for a few minutes
- wait till both the lye solution and the coconut oil reach more or less the same temperature, then slowly add the lye solution to the oil while mixing with a spoon
- mix with a spoon until the texture is smooth
- next carefully mix it with a blender stick until it reaches trace (until it is a light custard-like structure, do not blend too long or it will become too thick to work with)
- separate soap batch into two even batches, add colorants and fragrances of your choice to each part
- pour the soap into prepared mould by using the typical swirling technique *
- leave the soap to stand in the moulds for about 12 h before cutting
- leave the soap to dry in a well ventilated area for several weeks (4-6 weeks)
* To learn how to do a nice swirl soap I recommend visiting the Soap Queen website. You can find the best tutorials there!
http://www.soapqueen.com/bath-and-body-tutorials/cold-process-soap/creamy-cow-milk-cold-process-tutorial/
I love this recipe for its simplicity yet lovely outcome! Let me know what you think?
- weight of the appropriate amount of lye and dissolve it in cold water (always add the lye to the water, not the other way around and remember to wear gloves, googles and long sleeves and to work in a well ventilated area!)
- weight of the coconut oil on a digital scale and melt in a pan
- once it is melted remove from the hot plate and leave to cool down for a few minutes
- wait till both the lye solution and the coconut oil reach more or less the same temperature, then slowly add the lye solution to the oil while mixing with a spoon
- mix with a spoon until the texture is smooth
- next carefully mix it with a blender stick until it reaches trace (until it is a light custard-like structure, do not blend too long or it will become too thick to work with)
- separate soap batch into two even batches, add colorants and fragrances of your choice to each part
- pour the soap into prepared mould by using the typical swirling technique *
- leave the soap to stand in the moulds for about 12 h before cutting
- leave the soap to dry in a well ventilated area for several weeks (4-6 weeks)
* To learn how to do a nice swirl soap I recommend visiting the Soap Queen website. You can find the best tutorials there!
http://www.soapqueen.com/bath-and-body-tutorials/cold-process-soap/creamy-cow-milk-cold-process-tutorial/
I love this recipe for its simplicity yet lovely outcome! Let me know what you think?
Looks beautiful!
ReplyDeleteI made all by recipe, in 2 hours noticed it's start cracking on a top? Omg, in a case it will break apart on me, can I melt it all and pour again in a different mold?
ReplyDeleteHi Halyna,
DeleteIt sounds like your soap is over heating. I have had this happen before if I use certain molds in which the soap does not cool down properly. Usually though it only cracked slightly on the surface and the rest of the soap was ok. You can always put it in the fridge to reduce the temperature. This is sadly a common issue with 100% coconut soap. What happened after those two hours??
Here you can find some very useful information about over heating of soap:
Deletehttp://www.lovinsoap.com/troubleshooting/
Hope it is of any help!