Hawksquill
Well-Known Member
So I posted previously asking for advice about how to formulate a soap recipe for a friend with sensitive skin. After a lot more reading and research, I settled on this recipe:
35% palm oil
25% olive oil
15% cocoa butter
10% coconut oil
10% sweet almond oil
5% castor oil
With 33.3% lye concentration 2:1 water: lye ratio, and 7% superfat.
Plus .25 oz grapefruit EO and .5 oz rosemary EO, at her request (these are the tried and tested EOs that her skin doesn't react to, and they happen to go together super well - serendipity!) No colorants because I didn't want to risk irritating her skin.
I insulated for about 18 hours and a little more than 24 hours after pouring, it was ready to be unmolded and cut! Pics below.
A few notes about this soaping session:
-After reading so much on this forum, I decided to be a lot less precious about my soaping temperatures. The lye was at about 105 F and the oils were about 125 F. Everything was fine and no one died, gasp!
-Emulsified nice and quickly, I let it get to a medium-thick trace before pouring.
-I haven't worked with cocoa butter before! I want to do a bit more research before I use it again.
-It smells amazing, but I'm curious to see how the scents last through the cure.
-I LOVE the color! It's funny that I invested in some CP-stable micas and wanted to experiment with other natural colorants, and I'm finding that I love the look of uncolored soap. Again, we'll see how it holds after the cure!
-These bars are quite a bit shorter than my previous batches. I usually have slightly too much batter for the mold, and I wanted to avoid that this time, so I calculated the recipe to have slightly less total oils by weight. I think I might have gone too far in the other direction, and will try something in the middle next time.
-This is the highest SF I've ever done, so I'm slightly worried about DOS but trying not to worry too much.
-The texture of this soap was a bit different, less smooth and a little more flaky? It looks and feels a lot like a hard cheese. I don't think it's necessarily a problem (unless you all tell me it is!) I wonder if it's the cocoa butter or something else I did differently this time.
Will try to remember to come back and post more updates after it's nice and cured!
35% palm oil
25% olive oil
15% cocoa butter
10% coconut oil
10% sweet almond oil
5% castor oil
With 33.3% lye concentration 2:1 water: lye ratio, and 7% superfat.
Plus .25 oz grapefruit EO and .5 oz rosemary EO, at her request (these are the tried and tested EOs that her skin doesn't react to, and they happen to go together super well - serendipity!) No colorants because I didn't want to risk irritating her skin.
I insulated for about 18 hours and a little more than 24 hours after pouring, it was ready to be unmolded and cut! Pics below.
A few notes about this soaping session:
-After reading so much on this forum, I decided to be a lot less precious about my soaping temperatures. The lye was at about 105 F and the oils were about 125 F. Everything was fine and no one died, gasp!
-Emulsified nice and quickly, I let it get to a medium-thick trace before pouring.
-I haven't worked with cocoa butter before! I want to do a bit more research before I use it again.
-It smells amazing, but I'm curious to see how the scents last through the cure.
-I LOVE the color! It's funny that I invested in some CP-stable micas and wanted to experiment with other natural colorants, and I'm finding that I love the look of uncolored soap. Again, we'll see how it holds after the cure!
-These bars are quite a bit shorter than my previous batches. I usually have slightly too much batter for the mold, and I wanted to avoid that this time, so I calculated the recipe to have slightly less total oils by weight. I think I might have gone too far in the other direction, and will try something in the middle next time.
-This is the highest SF I've ever done, so I'm slightly worried about DOS but trying not to worry too much.
-The texture of this soap was a bit different, less smooth and a little more flaky? It looks and feels a lot like a hard cheese. I don't think it's necessarily a problem (unless you all tell me it is!) I wonder if it's the cocoa butter or something else I did differently this time.
Will try to remember to come back and post more updates after it's nice and cured!
