Learning New Skills – Soap Making
After a rough tiring week at work, I took Friday afternoon off. (Truth be told, my ‘afternoon’ started at 10:30AM that day.) I headed to my friend A’s house to do some soap making. When I got there, her daughter dutifully told me that “daddy prayed that nothing will explode.” Ha ha! A’s husb& was home & he said in his defense, “I was laughing when I prayed that.” (I’m glad he did! – both pray for us & laugh!) J
A had gone out & purchased all the ingredients needed ahead of time so when I arrived, we were ready to get started. But, before we did, A & I sat down & read through all of the instructions on how to make the soap. Then we headed to the kitchen.
A covered the counter with butcher paper & pulled out all the ingredients we would be working with. She determined which pitcher to use to mix the water & lye & marked it so her family wouldn’t use it again in the figure.
We started by mixing the water & lye. This was where we prayed ourselves that nothing would explode. Thankfully, their house is 100% intact with no damage done. There was an odor that was pretty harsh when inhaled, but we opened the kitchen window & door then turned on the exhaust fan. The odor didn’t last long.
While we waited for the water/lye mixture to cool off, we measured out & weighed the other ingredients. We used Olive Oil, Coconut Oil, Castor Oil & later added the lemon essential oil. The oils went into a pot on the stove which was turned low to melt the coconut oil. By the time we were finished getting all of the oils measured & into a pot, the water/lye mixture had cooled to about the same temperature as the oils.
We then cautiously poured the water/lye into the oils pot & got the immersion blender going. We fully submerged it & I started it on low. I blended & blended & blended. The mixture started to look like pudding (DON’T EAT IT!) & kept going until it was thick enough that we got ‘trails’ as we moved the blender through it.
Once we had trails, we added the lemon essential oil. We poured it in on top & then started up the blender again to get it all incorporated in.
Once we had deliciously smelling liquid pudding-like soap, we slowly poured it into paper cartons. A had cartons cleaned ahead of time to use as the forms. (Remember making c&les in kindergarten using the school milk cartons? – ok, maybe I just aged myself.) I held the pot up & A scraped the mixture into 2 of the forms.
She decided ahead of time that she wanted to try lemon poppy seed for one of the forms, so we stopped & put the pot down. She added the poppy seeds & we mixed it all together again. We then poured the mixture into the final form.
I lifted & dropped all of the forms (ok, so actually one or two at a time, not all at once) against the countertop to work any air bubbles out before it set.
Now, we wait. A moved the forms out of her kitchen so they could set for a day. They are still caustic for 24 hours. & Saturday, she’ll take them out of the forms & cut them. We’re hoping to get 24 small bars from this batch. Once they’re cut, they will cure for 3 weeks before we’ll use them.
I’ll provide an update once they’ve been cured.
We both decided this was not something to be afraid of doing & was much easier. We were also very happy to try it for the first time with a friend & not alone. J (What isn’t better with a friend?)
The recipe & instructions we used came from Little House in the Suburbs by Deanna Caswell & Daisy Siskins.