Banana Boat Song aka Day O Swirled Soap, Music Inspired Series

Since I’m on a kick of songs from the Muppets, I decided to branch out and find inspiration in the Banana Boat Song or Day O as it was performed by Harry Belafonte. The first time Harry sang this signature song on television was in 1978 on The Muppet Show! I guess I love the Muppets! I wanted to make a yellow and white swirled soap for this song, but I would like to try a layered soap using this song as inspiration. Since one of the colors I received from Tina was a brilliant yellow, I thought it was a perfect color for this song. Since I don’t have a banana scent, I decided to find a tropical scent. I decided that I wanted to use Tea Leaf & Papaya for my topical scent and I think it made a drool worthy soap! For this batch, I made a video for you to watch! Let’s go make some soap! Collect needed items: Ingredients Hydrogenated Soybean Oil Olive Oil Palm Kernel Oil Shea Butter Sodium Hydroxide Water Tea Leaf & Papaya Fragrance Oil Saturn Yellow Color White Lip Balm Color Equipment Scale Soap Buckets Soap Spoon Gloves Mold of your choice (I’m using a silicone mold.) Immersion Blender Drinking straw

Bars of soap after being cut. The soap is ready to be unmolded.

Recipe:

*q.s. = Quantity Sufficient. This is an ingredient that needs to have the amount calculated to match the size of batch that you are making.

Making Soap:
Measure fixed oils on your scale. Warm the fixed oils on the stove or in the microwave. I melted the oils in a microwave. Add sodium hydroxide to the water. Mix well. At this point, I added the fragrance to the oils because I didn’t want to forget to add it.

Once the oils and lye solution temperatures have dropped to a lower temperature (my temperatures should have been around 120 degrees Fahrenheit but were closer to 100 degrees Fahrenheit), combine oils and lye solution. Mix until thin trace. Divide the soap into two parts. I learned a lesson from my previous two soaps, so I weighed the soap as I was dividing it. I used 10.5 ounces or 300 grams of raw soap for my yellow color and 21 ounces or 600 grams for my white color. Add one color to each batch of raw soap and mix well starting from lightest to darkest to not have to clean the blender between colors.

Alternate pouring the two colors of soap into the mold and use a drinking straw to create a swirling pattern. With two batches under my belt, I was more confident about properly swirling this soap. Allow to sit until soap is firm. The next morning cut into bars. Stack to allow good air circulation. Allow to cure for several days before using. Longer curing will result in a harder bar.

After cutting the soap, I discovered that my soap had a few problems (cosmetically) due to a low temperature while soaping and the stearines were very obvious in the white portion of my soap. Now I’ve learned my lesson to make sure my temperatures are in the right range.

Soap Notes: This soap had a light scent that was significantly stronger after the soap was wet. The lather was a combination of creamy lather and big bubbles. I like the feeling the soap left on my skin after washing my hands.