Teach Soap

Well, I am on my mission (again - sigh) to get some standard recipes in place. So right now I am trying to develop a recipe with no animal fats. I have family and friends that are vegetarians. And of course I was trying to find an alternative to palm oil so in studing all of my notes I have decided 'there isn't one". Can anyone tell me if I have this correct.

And I sort of jumped the gun and bought a bottle of soybean oil thinking this might be the answer, but I see the properties are similar to grapeseed or sunflower oil. And now I am wondering what is the difference in the solid soybean oil and the liquid? I could probably use it for cooking buy usually cook with olive or grapeseed oil, so still think I should try it in a soap. Suggestions?

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Susie
Sometimes A Mistake is so much fun, You just have to do it again!

I don't use palm oil at all. Depending on your recipe, it might not need it. I would reformulate without it if that's a concern. Solid soybean is hydrogenated to make it a solid or semi-solid. You can use it in soap. Use the SAP value of regular soybean.

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Irena
Closed minds are like faulty parachutes; they refuse to open.

I don't use palm or animal fats. I'm not opposed to using them, I just get *squicky* when it comes to animal fats, even when cooking & I've just never found that palm was that great.

If you're looking for the same qualities that palm gives, like hardness and stable lather, then you may want to use a butter (cocoa, shea, etc).

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Genny

I have at least 3 super simple recipes that have no palm oil in them and all 3 make nice hard bars... castile (100% olive), bastille (olive & coconut), Shea butter (olive, coconut & lots of shea butter). Sometimes I like the simple purity of high olive oil content soaps...they really are quite nice!

Wow! thanks everyone. I do use cocoa butter, and now shea butter since I found out my grand-dtr is able to use it (nut allergies). I was mostly concerned about making an oversoft soap. I think it is time to experiment wsith different amounts. I still don't want to go overboard with the shea butter to trigger an allergic rx but will up the cocoa butter as I go along. I love this learning process, everyone is so helpful.

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Susie
Sometimes A Mistake is so much fun, You just have to do it again!

I love my olive & coconut recipe. It's conditioning and lathers like crazy.

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Linda
I know the voices in my head aren't real, but they sure have some great ideas!

Linda, No butters?

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Susie
Sometimes A Mistake is so much fun, You just have to do it again!

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Linda
I know the voices in my head aren't real, but they sure have some great ideas!

So I just did this soap... soaped at approx 107degrees, used:

CO 22%
cocoa butter 4%
Shea butter 4%
OO 35%
soy oil 30%
castor oil 5%

Superfat to 7% - 33% lye solution

0.6 oz of lettuce and 1 oz of niagria falls.

It went from no trace to full trace in less than a minute. I had colors mixed to do a faux funnel swirl, but I was lucky to just get the colors mixed in. Had to glop it in the molds. At least it did not rice on me. So now the question is - was it the lettuce FO or the soybean oil????? Scent review board has lettuce accelerating for some people and not for others. I have used niagria fall FO before without an issue. The lettuce was a sample so I may have to try this again with a different FO.
At least my dtr needs soap and she does not care what they look like!

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Susie
Sometimes A Mistake is so much fun, You just have to do it again!

Well Susie I used a sample of lettuce FO in my laundry soap a couple of weeks ago, and it didn't do anything, but it was a fairly large batch(without my notes in front of me I am guessing it was about a 3lb batch). Anyway...I know the FO won't go through on the clothes, but just wanted to test the scent. Also water discount was 30% AND it was just a sample(.5oz) so that is probably why it didn't do anything to the batch.


ETA-all this to say...I probably didn't help much.

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Debbie

I've use soy in quite a few trial recipes and never noticed a problem with acceleration. Maybe it was a combination of things. Darned soap gremlins!

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Linda
I know the voices in my head aren't real, but they sure have some great ideas!

I have wondered at times if it is not a mixing of different scents that could set it off? I have decided to do a cucumber melon... one color and maybe put some ground cucumber skins in for speckles with the same recipe. That FO has never misbehaved on me.

Debsission, that is what I found on the scent review board as well.... for one person it behaved very well and for the next it created havoc as soon as it was added. I was not a fan of the scent OOB but now that it is curing on my counter I am really liking it. Maybe I will just have to learn to work with it. I have heard that it has a floral component to it, which might account for the acceleration. My sample weighed out at 0.6oz. I was doing 2 pounds of oil or about 44 oz total of soap.

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Susie
Sometimes A Mistake is so much fun, You just have to do it again!

I've used lettuce FO with no problems. I bet it was the Niagara Falls FO mixed with the lettuce. Soybean is ok.

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Irena
Closed minds are like faulty parachutes; they refuse to open.

Irena, So if we blend FO's there is always the chance that the mix will behave differently than either one did alone?

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Susie
Sometimes A Mistake is so much fun, You just have to do it again!

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Irena
Closed minds are like faulty parachutes; they refuse to open.