Soap Making

I love homemade soap as much as.....  baby's laughter, sushi, and peace and quiet (and that's a LOT).  There's just not much better than a bar of rich, creamy, bubbly homemade soap.  Soap that's lacking preservatives and harsh additives, not to mention that it retains all the natural glycerin that is stripped from commercial soaps.  Did you know that commercial bar soap is technically  detergent, and not  soap?  


I've been wanting to make another batch for a while, and finally got around to it today!  This particular batch is Almond and Honey.  Scented with pure essential oils only, and no color for this one....  it'll have a nice natural ivory color.  


These pictures are NOT a tutorial on how to make soap, or a step by step pictorial either.  Just a peek at the fun I had today!  Now, I just have to wait 3 weeks for it to cure and finish the saponification process so that it's nice and mild, and hard enough to be long lasting.  

Gathering all my stuff together....  soaping takes a good deal of things that should only be used for making soap.  You don't want to mix food with these spoons later!

A good scale is really important...  things need to be measured very carefully to fractions of ounces.

Mixing sodium hydroxide (lye) with water means protecting skin and a having a good ventilation source, like a stove vent fan.  It'll heat up instantly to about 200 degrees.  It cools down and the oils warm up to the right range before mixing.

Some of the oils are liquid, and some are solid at room temperature.  They need to be gently warmed to blend together.

No way to take photos myself, while actually combining the soap (mixing lye water and oils), but this is just poured into the wooden mold and covered in plastic.

Now the soap is covered and it will start to heat up again with the chemical reaction of base and acid (which means soap is really a salt).  After about 18 hours it's ready to remove from the mold (which I forgot to take a picture of).

These are the newly cut and trimmed bars.  Now, they go on a shelf to cure for several weeks as the chemical process continues.  The finished bars will be mild, hard, and ready to use.  They smell YUMMY!   Can't wait to use them!


Next week I'll be making Rosemary and Peppermint.  I'm going to try a green swirl through that one.  My swirling attempts haven't been so great before, but I think I know what I did wrong and I'm anxious to try it.