More Cold-process Soap

The most interesting thing to me about cold-process soap is probably the name, since the ingredients are either heated (the oils) or naturally heat themselves (the lye mixed with the water). Then, after the oils and lye water are mixed, they get even hotter.

I couldn't resist the urge and I made more soap. It's so fun to play and add different things and make different scented soaps. There are seriously over 100 scents that you can use with soap.  I can see how this could be a very addicting hobby.

I was a little better about taking pictures this time, so very quickly, this is how it's done.

First, you measure out all the oils and heat them until they are all liquid. The basic recipe I used for all the soaps has Avacado oil, Coconut oil, Canola oil and Lard.

After the oils are all melted, you get your pre-measured lye and add it to distilled water. Careful! Lye is poisonous, so get gloves, goggles, a face mask, long sleeved shirt, pants and closed toed shoes. As they lye gets added to the water, it dissolves, turns cloudy and heats the water up.

Then comes the fun part. Waiting for the oils and the lye to cool down to about the same temperature. Not too cool, but about 120 degrees or so. I never want to leave anything out for an unsuspecting child to accidentally touch or knock over, so I find this is a great time to clean something nearby. Like the kitchen.

After a while, the oils and lye finally get to be cool enough. The next step is to mix them together. You can do it by hand, but really....where is the fun in that? They make these really cool things called stick blenders. And, you can use them for more than just making soap. They're a great kitchen tool. Anyway, you mix and stir and  mix and stir for a little while.

The stirring starts the saponification process, which converts the lye and oils into soap. So, in the end there is no lye...don't worry. You keep stirring until the soap starts to get thicker, but not too thick. It's called trace. At a thin trace, you can add the fragrance and in this case, I added poppy seeds to act as an exfoliant.

There is so much you can do with soap. You can mix fragrances, add exfoliates, use colorants. They list goes on and on and the combinations are really endless. On this batch, I got a little bit brave and swirled in some colorant. I mixed red and yellow thinking I would get an orange. When I poured it into the mold, it looked pretty orange.

After pouring it into a mold, you have to put it into a cold oven with the light on for 24 hours. As the soap set up and the saponification process finished, my orange turned into more of a red. It's really pretty, though. When the soap is done resting for at least a day, you can cut it into bars (I cut 18 bars from this batch).

Now I just have to wait 3 weeks for it to cure to try it out. But, didn't it turn out pretty?

I used a fragrance in these called "Energy". It's a combination of orange and grapefruit. Bath and Body Works has a very similar scent that I love.

Here are the other kinds I made:

This one is scented with "Apple Jack" and has cinnamon and oatmeal mixed in.

I had a lot of fun playing with colors on this one. The scent is a knock off of one of my favorite colognes called "Cool Water". Since it's a men's fragrance, I hope Dave loves it as much as I do.

If you're wondering if we are going on soap overload after making four batches at roughly 18 bars per batch, let's just say that we definitely have our year's supply. We may go hungry, but gosh darn it, we will be clean, have perfectly moisturized skin and smell very nice. ;)

Thanks again, Brittany for teaching me how to do this! I've been having a blast!