I recently made a pumpkin soap and wanted to share my method.
I used the default water content on Soap Calc at 38% but made the following changes:
For half of the water content, I used a strong tea made with Celestial Seasonings Bengal Spice Tea. This tea was made with 8 oz of distilled water and 3 tea bags steeped for about 3 hours and then refrigerated. The Lye was dissolved in the cold tea.
Please note that this makes a strong lye solution at less than 2:1 water:lye solution.
I then continued to make soap as usual and at trace added the pureed, canned pumpkin (amount equaled the other half of the water content).
The soap gelled on its own.
The soap turned out beautifully. It has a nice pumpkin pie color and scent due to the strongly brewed spice tea. I am a big fan! I like this because I didn't spend a fortune on EOs which is what I would have used rather than using FOs. I also didn't add spices which would have added texture to the bar.The three tea bags cost less than a dollar!
The ingredients for the tea are:
Cinnamon, Roasted Chicory, Roasted Carob, Natural Spice and Vanilla Flavors with other natural flavors, Ginger, Cardamom, Black Pepper, Cloves and Nutmeg.
The soap is about 10 days old now and still smells really nice. Since this soap was made with a high liquid (tea and pumpkin) content, it will need a little more time to harden.
By the way, this is my favorite fall tea for drinking and that is why I had it to begin with!