Here Comes The Sun soap recipe

In this recipe, I used rich oils and butters that are available in craft shops online and in physical stores. We will also use dried calendula flower petals to create a soft exfoliant that will be used for a portion of the soap.

The recipe holds a 1.5 kg batch using a loaf mold.

OILS
700g Coconut oil
100g Olive oil
100g Cocoa butter
100g Shea butter

WATER
330g Distilled water

SODIUM HYDROXIDE
158g NaOH

ADDITIVES
20g Calendula petals
40g Coco Betaine (a surfactant)

Now if you have never made soaps before, I suggest you proceed to learning the basics of cold-process soap making before you attempt to make this.

BEFORE ANYTHING ELSE. Weigh everything. Prepare all your ingredients so you don't go back and forth on your weighing scale. Time is of the essence!

FIRST. Create your lye water. Mix the lye TO THE water and never the other way around. If you're an experienced soap maker you know what trouble awaits if you do the opposite. Always always lye to water or else you'll have a toxic volcanic fuming mess.

SECOND. Wait for the lye water to cool down to room temperature. This is a very important step as this will prevent cracking. Read it on a post I made about cracking.

THIRD. Melt your butters. I weighed my butters and olive oil in one container. After such, you can opt to melt them on a double boiler set up or simply, the microwave! As I am a lazy peach, I do the microwave. Just make sure not to overheat them as it may destroy the properties of your rich loving oils. (And quite price-y ones)

> Dissolve your colorants. Here I am using neon pink and neon yellow. In another batch, we do not put coloring and we just incorporate the calendula petals.

FOURTH. After all your butters have melted, mix them with your main oil - coconut oil. We, in the Philippines, are fortunate enough that coconut oil is practically everywhere. 

FIFTH. Now, mix your lye water to your oils. Make sure to mix them well with a stick blender or manually with a mix until you reach trace. Make sure they're well incorporated as this is as an important step as weighing your ingredients.

SIXTH. Now youre in trace, add your batter to the pink, yellow and calendula preparations. Mix them thoroughly making sure youre not getting too thick in the process. Then add your fragrance oil. This step requires you to panic and move fast as so much fragrance oils sold here are accelerators!

SEVENTH. Put them to your mold and swirl! Leave to harden for around 12 hours then cut.

2018 blog posts

I'm back! It took me quite ages to post again. As some of you know, I'm currently in post-graduate school, therefore, I barely had time to be in my craft. But now I have balanced the time to help my co-soapmakers in the Philippines. So, I treat you all with a new post!

Check them out under the 2018 tab. See you there!

Liquid soap additives: viscosity

The liquid soap I'm referring to is the soap made with caustic potash or potassium hydroxide. For those of you who have begun the venture on liquid soap, you know what I'm talking about. Potassium hydroxide soaps are different from commercial ones. Commercial ones are usually made with synthetic detergents and surfactants such as SLS or DLS. 

So what can we add to our handmade

liquid soap for viscosity?

1. SALT

Salt easily thickens liquid soap and adds viscosity. 

Left: Ordinary state | Right: added salt

Upon adding salt, the liquid soap easily thickened up. Although, one should keep note that the salt inhibits lather. 

2. Surfactant: CDEA

I talked about CDEA in my previous post. Check it out. :)

Upon mixing the soap and the surfactant, the soap begins to form into a gel-like substance from an opaque form. (I lost the picture) But you should try it. It adds more lather to the soap. 

I'll talk about more of this. :)

xSoap authority

Chemical of the day: Salicylic Acid in CP soap

Have you ever heard of Salicylic Soap? Salicylic Soap is said to be used against wrinkles and acne. Salicylic acid is a type of hydroxy acid that "works mainly as an exfoliant. It causes the cells of the epidermis to become "unglued" allowing the dead skin cells to slough off, making room for regrowth of new skin." -Dermatology.about.com

It also is a great way to improve lightening of scars.

So how do we incorporate this in our soap? 

First of all, you might ask: CP soap has a high ph level, therefore, wouldn't the salycilic lose its power in the saponification process? Well, there are a few things we may add to improve the power of the Salycilic acid in a cold process soap. 

1. Add EDTA (I will talk about this soon)

EDTA is used in soap making to prohibit the formation of DOS or Dreaded orange spots. It also is used to give more power to any chemical additive in soaps. 

2. Add Citric Acid. 

Citric Acid will lower the ph level of the soap and make the CP soap more on a translucent color. (I will experiment on citric acid on cp soap soon)

So now we can add our Salycilic Acid in CP soaps by adding both EDTA and Citric Acid. 

How do we add Salyclic Acid?

Things to remember:

1. Use Salycilic acid not more than 5% in soaps. 

2. Please dissolve it in oil. Never in water. Here's what happened to me:

In the picture above, I attempted to dissolve the acid in water. Salycilic is poorly soluble in water. Salycilic acid can disslove in water if assisted with heat. You can heat your water to reach a high temperature enough to dissolve the Salycilic Acid. But make your life easier and dissolve this on oil instead. Look below: 

See? Its soluble in oil. Its as easy as that.

Where in the process do we put our Salycilic oil? 

Place this on trace. Use 1/2:1. 1/2 part Salycilic to 1 part oil. 

x soap authority

Experiment: Cetyl Alcohol in CP soap

In a research conducted by Sir Kevin Dunn, a chemist with a wide knowledge on soap making as a science, he said that adding Cetyl Alcohol to cp soap is like adding Jojoba oil. 

Cetyl Alcohol is used in lotions as a thickener and adds slip and glide. You can research more about it to know its uses in lotions and creams. 

I took my time to try it after a couple of experiments. 

Sir Kevin Dunn suggested its usage at 5%. I modified my recipe of a 32 oz. oil batch to contain the 5% cetyl alcohol as part of superfat. My recipe was:

Oil Phase

27 oz Coconut Oil

5 oz Shea Butter

Superfat

1.6 oz Cetyl Alcohol (5%)

But I paused here and thought 1.6 oz is too much so I tried my first experiment at 3%. So my superfat is:

Superfat

.96 oz Cetyl Alcohol 

+ .64 oz Mango Butter

(to compensate for the 1.6oz total Superfat)

How do you add it to your batch?

Heat the oils along with the Cetyl Alcohol.

  Do not add Cetyl at trace. Cetyl tends to solidfy at room temperature and below making your soap batter consist clumps of cetyl. It will also tend to disperse unevenly throughout the batter. 

The .64oz Mango butter is for adding at trace. 

It's easy as that. 

Experiment:

L-soap with Cetyl Alcohol. R-soap without Cetyl Alcohol. 

Both soaps have the same recipes, amount of colourant, superfat, ingredients. 

Properties of the soap with Cetyl Alcohol

1. Color

Cetyl alcohol gives the soap an opaque color which tends to give it a 'lighter' touch of color. See picture above. 

2. Lather

The soap above is the soap without Cetyl Alcohol. As you can see, it gives quite a creamy lather and bubbles are small & minimal. While the soap with CetylAlcohol  (below) gives bigger bubbles but not a creamy lather. 

3. Slip

The soap with Cetyl Alcohol has a slip that a normal cold processed soap does not have. I don't know if its a good thing or a bad thing but I like it. 

4. Hardness

The picture above is the soap w/out Cetyl. As you can see, I placed pressure in the middle of the soap and there was quite an impression in the middle. But below, you'll see that the soap with Cetyl Alcohol didnt even have an impression. The soap is actually hard. 

These are the properties I would firstly want to share with you. I'll talk about Cetyl Alcohol more soon!

Hope you got a few pointers! Keep in touch and let me know how yours turned out too. 

xSoap Authority

Soap forensics: CRACKING

Have you ever experienced your soap to crack after molding in a couple of minutes or so? 

Take this picture for reference:

Reference: www.lovinsoap.com - They have a lot of information on troubleshootings in soap making. 

The cracking is caused by OVER HEATING. Culprit? High temperature. 

How does over heating happen in soap making?

1. High temperature lye solution

It is, indeed, important that after you have mixed your sodium hydroxide to your water, you must let the solution cool down. The ideal temperature of the lye solution upon mixing with the oils is at ROOM temperature. 

Just by touching the container of the solution, you will be able to know if it's cool enough to be emulsified with already. 

Why does this make sense? But then the batter really heats up to complete saponification, right?

The batter does heat up to a point where the temperature rises quite high but not high enough to make the soap crack in the mold. The additional temperature from different factors are the culprits to over heating then cracking. 

So,

Aside from a high temperature lye solution, what else leads to overheating?

2. Over insulation

If you are a new soap maker, you may have come across articles that suggest insulating a soap in a mold. Yes? If so, a thick layer of an insulating material may cause temperatures to rise. This is quite important for soapers living in cold areas. Since I live in the Philippines where it is actually hot, I do not find insulation important. 

Why is insulation important anyway? Insulation is important to aid in the gelling phase of the saponification process. Without gelling, the soap may not achieve the ideal color you wanted. Gelling helps in a better color but it is not really necessary. Although gelling is really part of the saponification process, a partial gel may occur if you did not insulate, which is not aesthetically appealing. It's really subjective though. 

What is partial gelling?

Photo Reference: http://gowestsoap.com/?p=182

Here above, is a product of partial gelling. It is when you stop the rise of temperature in the gelling phase by not insulating the soap in the mold or by placing the batch in the refrigerator. 

Back to the topic.

Insulation rises the temperature of the batter, which in turn, may result to cracking. 

A lesson is to not OVER INSULATE. Especially if you live in a warm area, insulation isn't necessary. 

3. Additives:

A. Sugar

Anything with sugar upon heated contributes a higher temperature. Even in cooking, caramelizing may reaaaaally burn due to the heated sugar. Temperature is at tops. So, if you add sugar to your lye solution, make sure your lye solution is still at room temperature. 

B. Fragrances

Some fragrances contribute to a lead on high temperature in soap. Choose your fragrance oils carefully. 

4. Palm oil

Many soapmakers claim Palm Oil to contibute to cracking or overheating. I'll have to experiment with it soon. 

So there. Keep these things in mind and avoid the crime of overheating! A soap crack is hard to mend. So, avoid it. 

Til the next post!

x Soap Authority

Just a note

I am not deeply enthusiastic on the artisan side of making soap. I concentrate more on the quality of soap. The posts I'll be concentrating on are the things you can add to make a better soap. 

But I will be posting the design elements of soap that can help you in an easier manner. :) 

More power to you, guys!

x Soap Authority