My friend Maggie and I got together today to make a batch of soap. Some of you wanted to see the process, so here we go....
This is a very basic soap recipe which includes tallow (animal fat), cocoa butter, olive oil and lye. Yes, lye, the stuff that also opens clogged drains. The process is basically a chemical reaction, and this is how it happens:
You'll need 2 stainless steel pots (MUST be stainless steel. The Lye will do some very nasty things to you and your home if you do not use stainless steel), one small (2 or 3 qt), and one large (8 qt or larger). In the small pot, combine 4.5 cups of cold water and 1 cup and 3 teaspoons of lye. (REMEMBER: RUBBER GLOVES for protection from the lye!!!) The water will become very hot, sometimes up to 200 degrees (Do this step OUTDOORS!!!):
Stir until the lye is disolved:
Let this cool.
In the large pot, combine the tallow (8 cups), cocoa butter (3 cups) and olive oil (2 cups). Raise the temperature till this mixture is between 90 and 110 degrees:
When the lye has cooled down to 80 to 90 degress, add it to the tallow mixture:
And then you stir. And stir, and stir, and stir. Use a wooden or plastic spoon, preferable one with holes or slats, so the mixture can aerate (I used a plastic spatula). Stir by hand in intervals of ten minutes, then you may use a stick blender for one minute to speed up the process:
Keep stirring, alternating by hand and by stick blender. After lots of stirring, the mixture will become whiter, and will begin to "trace", or leave little lines when you lift the spoon out and make little trails in the mixture. Kinda like when a good bartender will make a little shamrock in the head of your Guiness at a good Irish pub.
Once you have obtained a good trace, it's time to add stuff. I added French Green Clay (a natural anitoxidant), Lemongrass (another antioxidant), and uncooked, whole Oatmeal (which exfolliates and moisturizes the skin). Fold these into the mixture, and when you have achieved trace again, add your essential oils. I added tangering/evergreen oil, which smells YUMMY!
This is Maggie's mixture, to which she added French Green Clay, Oatmeal and Calendula Petals. She used Eucalyptus as her scent:
Once eveything has been added, pour into molds:
These will later be turned out and cut into bars. I had a little left over in the pot, so I filled a few silicone molds in the shape of roses. I hope they turn out well:
The soap needs to sit for about 48 hours, then you turn the soap out of the molds, and cut into bars. Once they are cut, they need to sit and cure for about two weeks. I'll share pics of the bars of soap in a couple of days.
That's it in a nutshell. The whole process today took about 3 hours. Maggie and I took beginner and advanced soap making classes together about a year ago, and we had homemade soap for almost a year (I think I had about 60 bars of soap before I started to give it away as gifts). This was our first time doing it by ourselves, and I think it worked very well. It's the only soap I used in the past year, and it's really awesome for your skin. When the soap gets too small to use, don't throw it out! You can put it in a blender with a little water and some liquid vitamin E and make hand lotion, which is really good as well.
Now it's time to put my feet up, have a beer, and do a little knitting on Mom's scarf. Have a great night!
Wow, that is an excellant tutorial! I only have one or two bars left of the soap you sent me. It's wonderful stuff. Now I can't wait to see the next part of the process. I've always wanted to try making the soap, but something about the lye scares me.
Posted by: Dave Daniels | November 26, 2006 at 07:41 PM
Great tutorial, I bet it smells great too. I'm with Dave, the lye scares me too.
Posted by: Ruth | November 27, 2006 at 12:04 AM
Wonderful. More work than I can handle right now, but I love to see the process.
Posted by: jessie | November 27, 2006 at 03:06 AM
oh yeah baby! I so want to learn to do this. Do the pans have to be used only for soap? Where do you get the tallow? Cocoa butter? And..um is the olive oil food grade? And you thought with this post you'd shut me up. Silly boy!
Posted by: Susan | November 27, 2006 at 03:40 AM
Oh I love hand made soap! I have never tried making it myself. I usually buy a bunch of it at the different fiber festivals. Thanks for showing how it's done.
Posted by: Karen | November 27, 2006 at 05:51 AM
Hey this is good stuff! We've made soap the "cheater's way": where you buy the block of it and melt it in the microwave, add some color and scent and pour it into molds. But this....wow....now THIS is soap making. I may have to try it.
NOTE TO SELF: Get some rubber gloves!
Posted by: Mike | November 27, 2006 at 09:18 AM
What a great tutorial on soap making...I've made glycerine soaps in the past = but never any of the lye based soaps...I too have a fear of lye...
Posted by: Sara | November 27, 2006 at 10:58 AM
That kinda resembles how my Thanksgiving gravy turned out!
Posted by: Diana | November 27, 2006 at 01:12 PM
Thanks, Paul. It looks much easier than I'd imagined after reading my soapmaking book (the book is lovely, but scared me away from actually DOING it.)
Posted by: Stacy | November 28, 2006 at 05:08 AM
knitting? - soap making?
do I know you??? :-P
looks like terrific soap!
Posted by: Tristan Robin | November 28, 2006 at 08:21 AM