Your Standard Recipe

[CatahoulaBubble]

It took me a couple of years to find my favorite recipes but that's because I wanted to see how they held up over time. My final 3 top recipes still perform 7 years the same they performed after 6 weeks. One of them still holds the fragrance. I prefer recipes that use butters as well because of the way they feel when they lather up and the way they make my skin feel after bathing.

 

[Kcryss]

It sounds like you were aiming to produce soap with specific qualities. My approach has been a little different. I aimed to produce soap recipes with distinctly different dominant qualities. Doing that has helped me to understand what specific fats bring to soap in the context of mixtures, rather than as single fat soaps. For example, I’ve made very hard bars by giving up some (or a lot) of soft oils, but I now know that I will like a hard bar better if it includes a fair amount of linoleic FA (maxed out at 15% for now) rather than mostly oleic. I’ve also compared bars with 0, 5 of 10% castor, and bars with lard vs. palm vs. butters vs. soy wax as the main source of palmitic & stearic FAs. I’ve also made 100% olive oil soaps and soaps across a range of OO concentrations. I just recently started testing a tallow/lard combo as a base and can tell already that it’s different from a lard based soap of the same age, even when the stearic and palmitic numbers are similar.

What an interesting way to think about soap making. My goal so far has been to simply create a recipe that I like. I love the possibility of creating soaps based on their qualities. I would not have guessed that FA profiles that are similar from one oil/butter to another would produce different results. Thinking about it now though, it I suppose it does make sense. Thanks for sharing.

 

[lucycat]

One of them still holds the fragrance. I prefer recipes that use butters as well because of the way they feel when they lather up and the way they make my skin feel after bathing.

Why do you think one formulation holds fragrance better? Oils?, lye discount? I have always wondered if certain oils allow scent retention better than others.

 

[CatahoulaBubble]

I'm not entirely sure. The scent was hot apple pie from Camden Gray. The cinnamon notes are the only part of the fragrance left but it still smells very nice. Maybe the cinnamon is just stronger than everything.

 

[cmzaha]

It sounds like you were aiming to produce soap with specific qualities. My approach has been a little different. I aimed to produce soap recipes with distinctly different dominant qualities. Doing that has helped me to understand what specific fats bring to soap in the context of mixtures, rather than as single fat soaps. For example, I’ve made very hard bars by giving up some (or a lot) of soft oils, but I now know that I will like a hard bar better if it includes a fair amount of linoleic FA (maxed out at 15% for now) rather than mostly oleic. I’ve also compared bars with 0, 5 of 10% castor, and bars with lard vs. palm vs. butters vs. soy wax as the main source of palmitic & stearic FAs. I’ve also made 100% olive oil soaps and soaps across a range of OO concentrations. I just recently started testing a tallow/lard combo as a base and can tell already that it’s different from a lard based soap of the same age, even when the stearic and palmitic numbers are similar.

And this has been part of my quest and why it took me so many years. I wanted the balance that did what I like and finally hit on it. I wanted long-lasting, less soap scum, less cleansing, good lather, creamy, a few other attributes which were not the easiest to come by. Plus new ideas pop up and then the testing starts over again.

 

[lucycat]

Why do you think one formulation holds fragrance better? Oils?, lye discount? I have always wondered if certain oils allow scent retention better than others.

Cinnamon is a strong scent and that may be the reason it held. I used to see writers say that deodorized oils (palm, cocoa butter) didn't hold fragrance as well. I haven't really seen that statement as true but was curious if the oils you used might have made a difference.

 

[CatahoulaBubble]

I used olive oil, coconut oil, castor oil, avocado oil, shea butter, almond oil, cocoa butter, palm kernel flakes, and sunflower oil in the one that held the cinnamon scent.