Soap Therapy (with pictures)

It has been a while since I have made soap. So I decided to grab my soap bucket and make something.

I really like the Tropical Rose soap recipe, so I wanted to start from there. This is really just a variation on that recipe.

Ingredients:

• 16 oz wt Coconut Oil
• 19 oz wt Palm Oil
• 25 oz wt Palm Kernel Oil
• 4 oz wt Mango Butter
• 9.5 oz wt Sodium Hydroxide
• 24 oz wt Spring Water
• 0.15 cc Purple Raspberry color
• 1 fl oz Soothing Chamomile Fragrance Oil

Instructions:

1. Mix lye into water and let cool.
2. Add colorant to 1 oz of water and set aside.
3. Combine all oils and melt.
4. Stir lye mixture into oils.
5. Add colored water until desired color is reached.
6. Stir until mixture reaches a light trace.
7. Add fragrance oil.
8. Pour soap into mold and let cure.
9. Cut into bars and let air dry.

Notes & Comments:

	We start by measuring the oils and making sure that all ingredients are on hand.
	Here is another shot of the oils in my bucket, ready to melt.
	Here is my mold, cleaned and ready to prepare.
	Here is my mold with the surface covered with Saran Wrap and ready to assemble.
	Here is my mold as I am putting it together.
	Here you can see the mold all assembled and ready for soap.
	The lye has been mixed and the oils are melted.
	All other additives such as colorant and fragrance are ready.
	The lye solution has just been added to the oils. The lye was 130 F and the oils were 140 F.
	We begin mixing with the immersion blender.
	Here we have added the color and continue to mix. Fragrance was added once the soap reached a thin trace.
	Now we pour the raw soap into the mold. It took about 10 minutes from the time we added the lye solution to the oils to pouring into the mold.
	The soap is now in the mold and we are ready to clean up.
	After about 20 to 25 minutes in the mold, we can see the soap heating up and going through a gel phase.
	During the gel phase the soap gets hot. Here you can see that the internal temperature of the soap is at 190 F.
	After a few hours the saponification process is starting to wind down and the batch is starting to cool.
	Sixteen hours later the soap is unmolded and then cut into bars.
	My yield on this batch is 18 1\'x2\'x3\' bars, 6 thin 2\'x3\' bars and four soap balls.