Natural Soap. Melinda Coss
your lye.
For a harder soap try adding up to 2 per cent beeswax to your formula. Beeswax is also a useful emulsifier and thickener for creams and is particularly good in pure olive oil soaps. Honey is a scrumptious additive and is used for its emollient qualities. It can be added at trace if warmed slightly before use or alternatively add it to your lye solution.
COLOURINGS
The earth provides us with a number of natural ingredients that can be used to colour soaps and creams. The following natural ingredients are particularly useful for muted colours. Dilute the colourings in a drop of warm water and then mix with a spoonful or two of your traced soap before adding this back to your main batch and mixing thoroughly. This will avoid a speckled effect.
| CARROT POWDER | ORANGE |
| CAYENNE PEPPER | SALMON |
| COCOA POWDER | BROWN |
| COFFEE | BROWN |
| CURRY POWDER | YELLOW TO PEACH |
| GINGER POWDER | PEACH |
| MADDER | PINK |
| PAPRIKA | PEACH |
| SPIRULINA | GREEN |
| TURMERIC | CORAL |
Two very useful gifts from nature are alkanet, which is a tree bark, and the seed annatto, commonly used to colour cheese. Both of these should be infused in warm sunflower or olive oil before use. Simply heat a cupful of oil and add ⅓ of a cupful of bark or seeds and leave this to infuse until it is deep purple, or yellow in the case of annatto. Alkanet will turn your soap anything from grey to a rosy lavender depending on the alkalinity of the soap whilst annatto gives you a warm sunshine yellow.
If you want to achieve bright colours there is no choice but to use cosmetic grade oxide powders or FD&C or D&C (food drug and cosmetic) grade manmade pigments. Oxides are sometimes sold as ‘natural’ but in reality they are an inorganic compound made up from synthetically prepared iron oxides that include some hydrated form of naturally occurring mineral deposits.
FD&C and D&C colourants are manmade but very tiny amounts are needed to colour your products. For this reason they are considered entirely safe.
When using oxides, dissolve approximately ¾ tsp in 28 g (1 oz) of warm distilled water – this is sufficient for a 1 kg (2 lb) batch of soap. When using FD&C and D&C colourants you need only enough pigment to cover the tip of a teaspoon dissolved in the same amount of water to produce quite a strong colour. Add these colours drop by drop at trace until you achieve the shade you want. For liquid soap and creams you can use liquid food colourants but be aware that only one drop of colourant will give you quite a strong colour.
Bar Soaps
THE BASICS
THE SIMPLEST AND MOST ENERGY efficient way to make soap is the cold process method. The equipment needed is very basic and you can make soap pretty much anywhere you have access to water. Previously I have used a method requiring access to a heat source but in this book nearly all the soaps have been made by chopping cold fats into very small pieces, adding any oils the recipe requires and then pouring the freshly made lye solution directly onto the cold fats and oils. No heat source or thermometers are required. This is a huge time and energy saver that does not in any way diminish the quality of the finished soap.
If you prefer to melt your fats and oils over a heat source before adding your lye solution, wait until both the oils and the lye reach a similar temperature. Pouring boiling hot lye over slightly warmed oils can cause overheating and in some instances this can result in the mixture boiling-up and overflowing (a bit like a volcano).
Traditional soap makers in France use a hot process method, boiling the oils and lye together for several weeks before salting off the soap from the solution. There are more kitchen-friendly methods of hot processing your soap and I have used these in two recipes on pages 60 and 63. One advantage of hot process soap is that the chemical reaction is complete once the soap is poured into moulds, so it is immediately safe to use. Whilst some curing time is still needed to allow the moisture in the soap to evaporate, this is not as lengthy as the curing time required in the cold process method.
Another soap making method is ‘melt and pour’. Whilst this method can produce colourful and very artistic clear bar soaps, you have no control over your base ingredients as you simply buy a readymade soap compound, melt it down, add colour and fragrance and pour into moulds. As this book is about making products from scratch I haven’t included any ‘melt and pour’ here.
EQUIPMENT
When I first set-up my business we somehow managed to make soap using plastic buckets, a hand-held electric drill and some large wooden boxes for moulds. This is what makes soap making an industry that can be created in any outreach in the world. Here is what you will need for cold processed soap making:
Plastic buckets x 2
These will be used to mix-up your lye solution and your soap. Domestic buckets are fine but if you are buying new ones buy rubbery rather than light-weight plastic as they will last longer.
Electric stick blender
This speeds up the stirring process enormously. For large batches use an electric drill with a stainless steel or stripped metal paint stirrer attachment.
Plastic, polythene or glass measuring jugs
Buy half a dozen of these as you will find a million uses for them.
Stainless steel spoon
Large with a long handle.
Moulds and greaseproof paper
Read more in the mould section on page 22.
Knife
Large, non-serrated and straight edged for cutting fats and finished soaps.
Rubber gloves
To protect your hands when handling sodium hydroxide and fresh soap.
Eye protection
Perspex glasses or plastic goggles available from DIY shops.
Sponges, kitchen roll and dishcloths
For cleaning-up during and afterwards.
Kitchen scales
Digital scales weighing in very small increments. You need specialist scales if you are making soap to sell.
Plastic beakers