Thoughts On Recipe?

[thinkativeone]

I'm designing a new recipe, was thinking I'd make it an almond milk soap superfatted at 8% (to be particularly nice for body and face throughout the cold months ahead) but I could just as well use water.

Let me know what you think of the percentages. I ran it through soap calc and it meets the values. Keep in mind palm and animal fats are not an option for me. I have precious little shea butter and castor oil at the moment, and not a whole lot of sunflower, but wanted to try something a little different. I can always eliminate the sunflower though and add more olive or something else if you think it'd be better.

Here we are (superfatting at 8%):

Olive Oil: 50%
Coconut Oil: 30%
Castor Oil: 10%
Sunflower Oil (high oleic is all I have - not sure of the difference between regular): 5%
Shea Butter: 5%

 

[lpstephy85]

Just a suggestion but I would change it to a Bastille recipe. I would try:

Olive Oil 73%
Castor Oil 10%
Coconut Oil, 76 deg. 17%

Soap Bar QualitySuggested RangeYour Recipe
Hardness29 - 54 26
Cleansing12 - 22 11
Conditioning44 - 69 71
Bubbly14 - 46 20
Creamy16 - 48 23
Iodine41 - 70 72
INS136 - 165 130

The original recipe still had high cleansing of 20. The superfat you had might be ok with that but that is your choice but I would try to keep it below 17 for a winter soap. You can superfat with the sunflower if you want but I would leave the Shea for a leave-on skin recipe.


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[Saswede]

I think that your recipe would be fine, thinkativeone. But I'd probably keep the CO to 25% or below for a winter soap. With an 8% SF and a high proportion of castor oil, I don't think that 25% CO would be drying ...... Even though it does have a high cleansing number. I regularly use 25-30% CO, and have found that as long as it's used in combination with OO and castor oil, and with a decent SF (6-8%) it's not too drying for a normal skin. And I do love shea butter in my soap - so if you switch out the sunflower oil, and have enough shea to increase the percentage, I'd up it to 10%.

While the soapcalc numbers are a good indicator of the soap's characteristics, the only way to know how the soap will turn out (wrt your skin and the hardness of the water in your area) is to try it. So consider making a small batch, and see what you think after 4-6 weeks ...... Then once you know whether you like it or not, you could make a bigger batch with any adjustments you may want to make.


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[shunt2011]

I too like your recipe but would also drop the Coconut to below 25% and add it to your shea or olive.

 

[thinkativeone]

I originally had it at 20% (the CO) but the values were not giving me a very hard or cleansing bar! Since there is no palm, I figured I might need more coconut, and wanted to add the shea for hardness as well (plus a luxury quality). I also have cocoa butter, but am concerned over it being comedogenic now, having read that... Perhaps it is not in a soap? I know olive makes a very hard bar, but this is my concern with olive: I have made regular castile and pure OO soap gets so GOOEY and SLIMY I really did not want that this time and am not sure if my recipe will avoid it.

The amount of Shea butter I have is just under one pound. I could do a 4 lb. batch and see how it goes. Was kind of hoping to scent it with orange essential oil but maybe I should wait to mess with my EOs till I know the base recipe works.

ETA: I just remembered I neglected to mention we have hard water here. Not sure if that means anything with this recipe, but 25% CO might be good then?

 

[paillo]

Question about the almond milk. Are you making your own, or going for a grocery brand? I've looked at the ingredient lists on the grocery 'milks' in the health food sections, and found them to be a lot of other ingredients with milk being down the list. Almond and other nut milks sound pretty easy to make, but I'm curious now, not having tried to make any of them yet...

 

[judymoody]

Your recipe looks fine to me but as a minor suggestion, I'd drop your coconut to 25 and add the remaining 5% to the shea, bringing it to 10%. Looks like a nice soap for winter.

I detest Castille but even a 20% CO/80% OO will get you away from the slime factor.

 

[thinkativeone]

Thanks so much Judymoody. I will eventually have to try a 20% CO/80% OO soap at some point as those are the two oils I have no problem getting.

paillo - It is easy to make your own, but it is NOT cost-effective - cheaper to buy it. However, there is only ONE store bought brand I find acceptable, and that is Whole Foods' 365 Organic brand because theirs is the ONLY almond milk in stores I have found that does NOT contain carrageenan. All my ingredients have to be certified organic which can be challenging sometimes.

Here is the ingredient list (it's not too bad) and a link:

Organic almond milk (filtered water, organic almonds), tricalcium phosphate, sea salt, xanthan gum, potassium citrate, sunflower lecithin, vitamin a palmitate, ergocalciferol (vitamin d2), dl-alpha tocopherol acetate (vitamin e)

- http://www.wholefoodsmarket.com/products/organic-almondmilk-unsweetened

I wanted to make some milk soap from raw milk, however I have in-laws I may gift some to and they might be weird about that. They are pseudo (not completely) vegans. So I thought almond milk would be a good place to start. Plus, I also limit my dairy consumption so I happen to have it on hand since I use it sometimes.

 

[Saswede]

You could also try coconut milk or even coconut cream ..... I really like using that in soap. If you substitute all of the water with the milk, it would discolor the milk to a light creamy yellow. So you could use a water discount, and add coconut cream at trace.

If your water is hard, 20-25% CO should be fine. And on the slimy OO soap, I'd recommend putting it away for 6 months and then trying it again. Castile or high OO soaps improve significantly with age!


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[thinkativeone]

I always age my OO soap that long or longer in some cases (unless I'm running low on soap) but unfortunately mine are STILL slimy. I've become tired of the feel since it requires much more effort to get a good lather going.

Coconut milk or cream sounds fun and everything, and maybe I'll try it at some point but I have to work with what I have right now, and I don't have any coconut milk nor can I go to the store to get some when I have a bunch of almond to use up. Should be neat to see how it turns out! My facial scrub has ground almonds in it and that's great so it shouldn't be bad. We'll see! Thinking this will definitely be just CP instead of CPOP because of the milk though, though overheating might not be an issue because of there being no real dairy. Still, I might decide to throw in a little orange EO or something, not sure yet!

ETA: I just had a thought. Loosely ground oats added at trace/on the top of the soap? Then it'd be an almond milk and oatmeal soap with shea butter in it for winter... It sounds kind of delicious.

 

[jade-15]

I've added oatmeal at trace, it's quite nice. For 750g (1.65 lb) of oil I added 1/2 cup oatmeal, and I like those proportions.