I need your help!

[Brian Suds]

I need to decode this recipe for my favorite soap,

it's called "Cherry Almond Poppyseed"

their website claims the following:

"Our beautiful handmade goat's milk soap is made from non-gmo olive oil and all organic natural vegetable oils."

also;

"A very soothing bar for dry skin. Superfatted with sweet almond oil and filled with organic ground oatmeal and exfoliating poppyseeds."


Can you help me craft this recipe?

 

[judymoody]

Without a full ingredients list, it would be difficult to duplicate.

As you are new to soaping, I suggest that you begin with a basic recipe before moving on to goat's milk which can be tricky to use.

There are great reliable recipes on Brambleberry's Soap Queen website as well as our own Amanda's Lovin' Soap blog.

If you want to try sweet almond oil, a good starting point might be 25% Coconut Oil, 25% palm oil, 40% olive oil, and 10% sweet almond oil. Determine the size of your batch and run it through a soap calculator like the one at soapcalc.net. I would stick with the default water (38%) and superfat (5%) and try a batch size of about 2 pounds. The calculator will determine the amount of lye and water you need based on the amount of oils you input. Alicia Grosso's Everything Soap Book explains in more detail how to use soapcalc as does a book called the Idiot's Guide to Soaping. It's not that complicated.

Use a light hand with the poppy seeds - they can be scratchy.

Hope this helps!

 

[honor435]

ive tried almond oil in soap it doesnt really seen to "add" anything, now shea or cocoa butter, yes! this is my fav recipe, oo, po, pk or co, shea ,castor

 

[SkinLover]

With the poppy seeds, I'd be more inclined to sprinkle them on top, rather than incorporating into the soap, but that's just personal preference - and a decorative desire

As for the goats milk, the only milk I use is organic coconut milk.

If I were to replicate their recipe (without the benefit of knowing the exact ingredient list), I'd be inclined to use my most popular and gentle cp recipe (listed below), using fresh, frozen goats milk in place of water for the lye solution (which I'd keep in an ice bath while mixing, to keep temps down). I SF at 6% and generally add 1-2% Sodium Lactate to the coconut milk (or, in your case, goats milk) before adding the lye.

15% Castor Oil
25% Coconut Oil
30 Olive Oil
20% Unrefined Shea Butter
10 Palm or Palm Kernal Oil
(Fragrance Free)

This soap comes out very creamy and bubbly, with a pale, creamy-yellow colour, and has an almost 'baby soap' smell to it, despite there being no fragrance added.

A very gentle soap, also apparently (and surprisingly) popular with the male 'significant others' of my customers.

Good luck

 

[bruce2288]

I line about non GMO olive oil tickled me. As far as I can research there are not GMO olive trees in commercial production. I guess maybe you can get someone to buy your soap by insinuating that other olive oil is GMO.

 

[Genny]

I would just go with your favorite recipe, substitute some goat milk for part of the water. Add a little ground oatmeal at trace and sprinkle some poppy seeds on top. Poppy seeds are really not a good exfoliator (they're very sharp), unless they're ground poppy seeds.

I'd skip the sweet almond oil. Like honor435, I've never noticed any difference to my soap when adding sweet almond oil. Plus, without testing, you really wouldn't know if it's the sweet almond oil that has superfatted and not the olive, or coconut, etc. Lye will saponify whatever oil it wants to. Unless of course you're HP'ing and add the oil after cook.

I'm with Bruce on the GMO thing. That's just marketing.

 

[Hazel]

If I were to replicate their recipe (without the benefit of knowing the exact ingredient list), I'd be inclined to use my most popular and gentle cp recipe (listed below), using fresh, frozen goats milk in place of water for the lye solution (which I'd keep in an ice bath while mixing, to keep temps down). I SF at 6% and generally add 1-2% Sodium Lactate to the coconut milk (or, in your case, goats milk) before adding the lye.

15% Castor Oil
25% Coconut Oil
30 Olive Oil
20% Unrefined Shea Butter
10 Palm or Palm Kernal Oil
(Fragrance Free)

This soap comes out very creamy and bubbly, with a pale, creamy-yellow colour, and has an almost 'baby soap' smell to it, despite there being no fragrance added.

A very gentle soap, also apparently (and surprisingly) popular with the male 'significant others' of my customers.

I wanted to point out that in your above recipe Palm and Palm Kernel have different properties. If someone used 10% PKO, this could possibly produce a more drying soap for people who have sensitive, dry skin since the recipe already has 25% CO in it. However, a higher SF plus the GM would help to make it milder and it looks like it would have lots of bubbles.

Using 10% Palm oil would make it more mild.