Replacing Palm Oil

Soapmaking Forum

Help Support Soapmaking Forum:

This site may earn a commission from merchant affiliate links, including eBay, Amazon, and others.
I personally am going to experiment with a straight sub between palm oil and avocado oil, probably going a little higher on some hardening oil to compensate. And adding something to harden.
IMO and IME, shea butter is an excellent sub for palm oil. Avocado oil is high in unsaponifiables and should be used at no more than 15% of your liquid oils in your formula. It's especially nice for making avocado face soap. :thumbs: ;)

BASIC TRINITY OF OILS
 
Last edited:
Personally, I plan to experiment next week with a no palm vegetarian soap for my sister using shea and cocoa butter. I would like to find a profile in FA similar to lard or tallow. If anyone has any links to great no palm vegetarian recipes for my research, please chime in!
 
Personally, I plan to experiment next week with a no palm vegetarian soap for my sister using shea and cocoa butter. I would like to find a profile in FA similar to lard or tallow. If anyone has any links to great no palm vegetarian recipes for my research, please chime in!
Do a search in the soy wax thread - I think @KiwiMoose has come up with and shared a pretty good recipe that meets your criteria.
 
Personally, I plan to experiment next week with a no palm vegetarian soap for my sister using shea and cocoa butter. I would like to find a profile in FA similar to lard or tallow. If anyone has any links to great no palm vegetarian recipes for my research, please chime in!
@Szaza has made experiments in this area, presenting the results on the forum. You may search for information in her threads.
 
I added both avocado oil and RBO to my standard recipe after about a year of tweaking. They both bring additional palmitic.
I've always made palm-free, vegan soap and my initial recipes used cocoa/shea butters to bring hardness.
Over time I've tweaked my recipe mainly due to the costs of some oils/fats.
I settled on soy wax and shea for my hard oils, CO of course, and then OO, RBO, Avocado and castor. RBO and avocado are the new kids on the block where initially I used more OO and apricot kernel oil. As stated both these newer ingredients contain more palmitic. More recently ( due to OO shortages and price hikes during the pandemic) I have increased my RBO to up to 40% of the recipe.
My recipe is high in stearic which I don't have a problem with.
 
My recipe is high in stearic which I don't have a problem with.
I haven't tried the soaps in person, but I have epigonised her recipe, and can confirm that it is indeed not a problem. The lather is creamy yet ample, and it leaves the skin with a pleasant sensation of mild cleanliness. I guess that forced gel & the high water content really help to avoid the stearic-notorious sensation (scratchy bricks with hardly any lather). Besides that, RBO and soy wax really are a dream team!
 
Back
Top