Soap (now with pics)

We took a cold process soap class today at a historic school. (Since people were working with scary chemicals, it seemed like whipping out the camera would be an unwelcome distraction. Therefore, this post does not contain photos of the process, only of the soap after it was unmolded the next day.)

We arrived at the classroom and were given a handout on the history of soap and a list of resources. We were also asked to come sniff the scents that the teacher had brought so we could vote on the scents we would use. I was delighted to find that most of these were nice quality essential oils (rather than synthetic fragrance oils), and could happily have voted for almost any of the options. However, I put in my votes for lavender and coriander, while DH selected eucalyptus and peppermint. (The winners were lavender, by a landslide, and lemongrass, by a single vote over peppermint. Sorry, DH!)

We got down to business pretty quickly with a 2.5x sized batch of honey-oatmeal soap. For this first batch, student involvement was fairly limited. We weighed out the different types of fat and stirred them in a pot over a warm burner til they melted and combined. We also measured out lye and distilled water… then stood back and watched from a respectful distance while the teacher, holding her breath, added the lye to water. (That scary stuff, strong enough to eat through a sweater if it gets on you, also releases nasty vapors that you don’t want to breathe.) I think half of us in the room were holding our breath in sympathy!

After both mixtures cooled down (lye mixture with the help of a cool water bath), they were combined, and the whole mess mixed with an electric mixer. About 30 minutes later, after several liberal additions of grapefruit seed oil, and the honey and oatmeal, the soap mix reached trace and we could pour it into the mold. (It smelled so nice, like toast dripping with honey, or oatmeal cookie dough!)

We split for lunch at that time, following a local resident out to where we could grab a quick bite. (Yummy orzo salad!) I kind of regretted leaving my coat in the car. It looked pretty and sunny outside, but even insulated with the cockiness that comes of making it through another winter, it was still too cold for shirt sleeves.

Back at the school, we noshed and pored over the handouts, reviewing the process. Yup, looked quite familiar, now that we’d tried it ourselves!

The teacher returned and gave us more handouts (oh no!): additional things to do once you’ve invested in all the ingredients. How to tweak/alter your recipes. How to try to fix a batch of soap you’ve messed up (worrisome that she has a handout on this!). The qualities of various essential oils, etc.

Then it was back to work for our scented soaps: first our lavender, to which we added loofah and colorant. We did a bit more of the work ourselves this time, two brave souls even tackling the pouring and beating of the scary lye. The new aspect was watching the teacher marble the top of the soap. If you have ever made cream cheese brownies, or any kind of marbled cake, you will have a general idea of the process. It looked very neat when she was done!

The lemongrass soap had the students collaborating (using the third different recipe) and tackling all the steps ourselves. Success! Not as visually arresting as the lavendar but, like everything we made today, it smelled absolutely delicious!

We’ll be able to go back and pick up the firmed up soap tomorrow. Then it has to cure in the basement for 4ish weeks (the chemical process is still in progress). The colors will change a bit too. We saw a honey oatmeal soap bar that she had made and it was quite a bit paler than our pumpkin colored soap mix.

I feel like this is something we could do at home, if we invest in all the ingredients and the (rest of the) equipment (the equipment has to be dedicated only to soap making, for safety’s sake); and if the cats can deal with being shut up in the bedroom for the duration. It was fun and - once we got over the eek factor with the lye - not really as scary as it initially sounded.