Shea/Cocoa butter soap feedback

Soapmaking Forum

Help Support Soapmaking Forum:

This site may earn a commission from merchant affiliate links, including eBay, Amazon, and others.

Flyrod77

Active Member
Joined
Oct 22, 2017
Messages
44
Reaction score
43
I am looking for a Shea & Cocoa butter recipe in a bath conditioning soap. This is high in Olive Oil, and I like what stearic acid adds to my shaving soaps, so thought I'd add 10% here in this bath soap recipe. Anyway, does this look like it will be okay? Thanks for helping me with feedback.

Butters Soap1.png
 
I don’t like high olive soaps personally. I never use more than 30%. I wouldn’t add stearic to a bath soap and if you do choose to do so I highly recommend you HP it. It will cause your soap to seize up in CP. I would add either palm or lard to the recipe. I would also do a 33% lye discount but again without the stearic.
 
I don’t like high olive soaps personally. I never use more than 30%. I wouldn’t add stearic to a bath soap and if you do choose to do so I highly recommend you HP it. It will cause your soap to seize up in CP. I would add either palm or lard to the recipe. I would also do a 33% lye discount but again without the stearic.

They're not kidding, stearic will cause CP soap to seize in under a minute. I used it in the very first batch of soap I made, and while it is a nice soap and lathers beautifully, there are huge stearic blobs all through the soap because I could NOT get it mixed fully once the lye hit. I'd recommend holding the stearic out until you get your lye mixed into the other oils and they've come as much to trace as possible.

I think if I were going to tinker with that recipe, I'd up the shea and cocoa butter both to 20% (or even 25% each, and take it out of the olive oil), drop the castor to 5%, keep the stearic at 10%, and drop the olive oil to 45%. And, as shunt said, switch your lye concentration to 33% unless you decide to hot process the soap, in which case your water amount is fine as is.
 
My very first bar of soap was 10% Cocoa Butter, 7% shea butter, 28% coconut oil, and 55% Olive Oil. I liked it, but as my first bar of soap, it seem like it took forever to cure. Now that it's almost a year old, it's really nice- thick, lotion-like lather.

If I were to try this again, I think I'd increase the cocoa butter & shea butter, reduce the coconut and olive oil. The castor oil at 5% would also be a nice addition.
 
I wouldn't use any steric. Its great in shave soap to add stability to lather but in CP, all it seems to do is add a weird waxy feel to skin. I know after I use shaving soap, I have to wash with regular soap to remove the waxy feel. I'd replace the stearic with coconut oil.
 
They're not kidding, stearic will cause CP soap to seize in under a minute. I used it in the very first batch of soap I made, and while it is a nice soap and lathers beautifully, there are huge stearic blobs all through the soap because I could NOT get it mixed fully once the lye hit. I'd recommend holding the stearic out until you get your lye mixed into the other oils and they've come as much to trace as possible.

I think if I were going to tinker with that recipe, I'd up the shea and cocoa butter both to 20% (or even 25% each, and take it out of the olive oil), drop the castor to 5%, keep the stearic at 10%, and drop the olive oil to 45%. And, as shunt said, switch your lye concentration to 33% unless you decide to hot process the soap, in which case your water amount is fine as is.

I like this suggestion a lot. Thank you very much.
 
WHOA! 72 pounds of soap??? That can't be right. What am I missing?
No coconut oil or Palm kernel oil or Babassu for lather/hardness? (replace the stearic with those)

Advice: Go to the Beginners Forum and find the Sticky for Beginner's Learn to Soap Online. Find David Fisher's site (The Spruce). I think he has a T & T (Tried & True) "Double Butter" Soap that may be just what you're looking for.

Best to do a small batch first -- you can tweak it to your heart's content from there. As always, it's a good idea to run all recipes through a lye calc first.
 
I don't use palm oil anymore and a lot of friends are asking for vegan soap. I designed a recipe with about 15% cocoa butter and 20% shea butter which works perfectly (not so much olive oil, and I included coconut oil and other oils).
Sometimes I forget to add salt in water or sodium lactate and the bars are always hard, luxurious and conditioning. For lather, I'd suggest castor and almond oil up to 10%-15% (forgot the right % for castor, but I think better under 15%).
Depending on your butters, this can make a pretty white soap. I'm soaping at lower temps so not sure if you'll have the time for complicated swirls or such, it tends to harden quick - but still time for simple designs.

Good luck! Let us know how it worked.
 
Last edited:

Latest posts

Back
Top