Kathy and I got our signals crossed today, and I thought that we would be working today and taking Friday off, while she had meant exactly the opposite.
No problem, though. My daughter, Emma, and I decided to forge ahead and create a tribute to summer. Today we made a coconut lime soap using coconut milk that we had frozen in ice cube trays last night.
Because we would be making a lime soap, we wanted to swirl a shade of green through the soap. Emma combined two different shades of green to create the color seen below. We used titanium dioxide (TD) to color the whole batch white.
In the picture below you can see the mixture of the oils. The recipe we used today called for coconut oil, olive oil, sunflower and safflower oils. We wanted something that would be nurturing for the skin and have been reading about the benefits of grape seed oil. When we noticed how yellow the sunflower oil was today, we decided to substitute grape seed oil for it instead. We knew that one of our essential oils would have enough orange/yellow in it and we did not want our soap to be yellow.
Before we made the substitution, however, we made sure to run the recipe through www.soapcalc.net to be sure the liquid and lye amounts were correct using grape seed oil.
We honestly forgot to take pictures of some steps. 1st we started with the lye mixture. We had frozen coconut milk in ice trays the night before because we knew we wanted to use it in the soap today. When using milks rather than water in the lye mixture, it is important to freeze it first to either frozen cubes or at least a slushy stage. Mixing the lye must be a slower process, adding just a small amount at a time and stirring in between additions. This keeps the milk from scorching in the heat of the chemical lye reaction.
Once we combined the coconut milk/lye mixture and measured the oils, we wanted to get the temperatures down to around 90 degrees F. The lye mixture was still much hotter than the oils (even after heating them slightly to melt the coconut oil), so we made an ice water bath in a shallow pan and placed the bowl with the lye mixture in it until it cooled. It really did not take very long at all.
When the temperatures were acceptable and within 5 degrees F of each other, we poured the lye mixture into the oils and blended with the stick blender until we reached light trace.
Below you can see a swirl of yellow along the edge of the batter. This is the essential oil mixture. For today's batch we combined lime oil from +Bramble Berry and pink grapefruit oil from +Lebermuth Co . Although we wanted a coconut lime soap, the lime scent alone seemed too overpoweringly lime - like a cross between lime Life Savers or Kool-Aid and some kind of cleaner. Adding a bit of pink grapefruit essential oil gave it the balance that it needed (at least for what we like and were looking for).
After we added the essential oils, we mixed in the TD to achieve an even base color and to be sure that we had as close to a white soap as possible - given the yellowness of the essential oil. For further skin nurturing, we also added at this point, 2 tsp. of Vitamin E oil.
We poured 1 cup of the batter into a Pyrex liquid measuring cup to reserve for later. From the batter left in the pot, we poured 1/2 of it into another container. Into that 1/2 we removed, we mixed the green colorant. Once the colorant was evenly mixed with the batter, we poured it back into the pot and then gently swirled it through the batter. It is a similar technique to making a marbled pound cake.
See the swirls of green in the batter?
This recipe makes a smaller batch of soap than our usual, so I created a divider to shorten the mold. I could have made shorter bars of soap, but I didn't want them to be shorter. I estimated the difference between the volume of this recipe and our usual one, then made an estimate for how much of the mold I would need. I think I made a pretty good guess!
Don't forget about the cup of white batter we had reserved in the Pyrex cup! Into this bit of batter, Emma added about 1/8 of a cup of organic, unsweetened, finely shredded coconut. We think that this will make an interesting texture for the top of the soap as well as a nice exfoliate.
We wanted to be sure that the "topping" for our loaf would be thick enough to stay in place without running over the sides of the mold, so I used the stick blender again and blended until this portion of the batter reached a nice thick trace.
When it reached a thickness we both liked, we gently spooned it over the top of the soap.
Finally, Emma sprinkled a bit more coconut on top just to make it look pretty.
We wrapped it up in our insulating box, and can't wait to see how it looks in a day or two when we cut it.
The soap should be ready to use during the first week of July.
Saturday May 31, 2014 (added by Kathy)
The soap was removed from the mold, and is now curing, even though Alison and Emma weren't here for the unveiling, I wanted to share it with you. This soap smells great, the essence of lime comes through with a hint of grapefruit, very clean smelling, the coconut on the top is really pretty, can't wait to use it, here is a peek at the finished product.
Look closely, you can see the shredded coconut on the top
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