One type of soap I always love to stock up on is my ylang-ylang and bergamot soap. This is a very simple and beautiful spring soap with an inviting flowery smell. Here is the formula and instructions on how to make it.
First you should buy a flower silicone mould, unless you already have one at home you can use. You can buy one here if you don’t have one already.
The formula has a superfat of 7% and water as of oils 27% (we won’t be doing any complicated swirls so we don’t need the standard percentage of 38% water as of oils)
Ingredients
- Coconut oil 100 grams
- Olive oil 300 grams
- Sunflower oil 50 grams
- Castor oil 25 grams
- Palm kernel oil 25 grams
- Distilled or deionized water 135 grams
- Lye (caustic soda/NaOH) 68.18 grams
- 7 grams of bergamot essential oil and 12.5 grams of ylang-ylang essential oil
- 0.1 grams of red iron oxide (like the one here)
10 grams of oat silk to make the soap look creamier (this is optional)
Instructions
- Put on your protection equipment: gloves, goggles and a set of old clothes. Leave as little skin exposed as possible.
- Weigh the distilled/deionized water in a beaker and the lye in another beaker
- Weigh all oils in one large beaker which can hold 1.000 grams of liquid
- Mix the red iron oxide with 5 grams of liquid oil and set it aside
- Weigh and mix the ylang-ylang and bergamot essential oils
- Go outside or in an open space and mix the lye with the water. Pour slowly the lye in the water beaker and mix continuously. Do not breathe in the fumes!
- After the lye is dissolved, pour the lye solution in the beaker with the oils while continuously stirring. Mix slowly!
- Mix until the coconut oil is melted (the heat of the lye water solution will melt the coconut oil)
- After the coconut oil is melted immerse the hand blender in the soap batter and tap lightly on the bottom to release the air trapped under the head of the mixer
- Keep the hand blender straight in the beaker and start mixing intermitently. Mix for 5 seconds, then stop. Use the hand blender to incorporate the oil floating on top.
- Mix for another 3 sessions then add the mixture of essential oils
- Mix with the hand blender until the soap reaches trace – there is no oil floating on top and the batter it’s of the consistency of thin melted chocolate and if you drag the hand blender through it, it leaves a light trace like when you drag a spoon through yogurt
- Pour a bit of the white soap batter in each individual mould
- Add the red iron oxide to the rest of the soap batter and pour it in each mould until they are full
- Cover the mould with cling film (this will stop your soap from getting soda ash during the saponification phase)
- After one week put on your gloves and take the soap out of the mould
- Let is cure in a well aired place, out of reach of pets and children and not in direct sunlight or contact with metals
- Leave it to cure for 3 to 5 more weeks (4 to 6 weeks from the day you’ve made it) before using it
- After it’s cured put it in a cardboard box to protect it and to maintain the fragrance until you use it