Oatmeal and Honey Cookie Bastille Soap

I bet you thought this was going to be a food recipe again eh?? Trying to keep you on your toes! Olive oil has so many health benefits, both by ingesting and using on your body for beautification! For all you new soap makers out there, see the tips below. (Any of our Extra Virgin Olive Oils will do just fine.)

1. It’s SO easy.Don’t bother with the Cold Processed Method where you have to heat several bowls and take the temperature of both the lye and the oils.Room Temperature Method is THE WAY to make soaps for busy Mamas.No temperature issues. Less clean up. And it takes about 1 hour or less to make a whole batch, including prepping the molds to cleaning up. This process works for soaps with lye, oil, and butters only. Check out these links:
   1. The Room Temperature Method by Soap Making Essentials
   2. Room Temperature Soap Making by Skin + Soul
2. Use a soap calculatorto check your recipes. My favorite isSoapCalcbecause you can simply input the percentages, weight, and oils that you want and it calculates everything for you. Plus, they give you very useful information about your soap’s properties: cleansing, hardness, conditioning, lathering, creaminess, and so on.
3. Prepare your molds before you start making soap. Grease your moldsfor ease of removing.
4. Prepare the ingredients you will be adding at trace.
5. Castile soaps (100% olive oil) take a LONG time to trace.Bastille soaps (bastard Castile, i.e. at least 70% olive oil) trace much quicker.
6. If you are using liquids with sugars, freeze them firstso that when you add lye to them the solution does not get too hot.
7. Once the soap traces, work quickly to put them in the molds.Or leave them out a few minutes longer if you want to create decorations with them.
8. Fragrances can darken your soaps, so I add these to the darker (chocolate) parts of my soap.
9. If you are using any milks instead of water in your recipes, refrigerate them overnight.Take a look at my “whipped cream”. After a few hours in the refrigerator, the cream is whiter.
10. Waitingto remove your soaps from the molds requires patience.You can usuallydo this in 24 -48 hours. My impatience has cost me pox marks on my soap. Plus, see #3, which I failed to do.
11. But waiting for the soaps to cure requires even more patience.Bastille soaps require 4 – 6 weeks, while Castile soaps require at least 4 – 6 months or even longer (they say 1 – 2 years at least to get a fuller lather).
12. Cleaning up is a breeze.Keep aside everything you used during soap production where little hands cannot reach and hurt themselves. 2 days later, wash them up with soap that has dried on and in them. I usually have enough to wash other things in my kitchen sink too.No waste!

Unique Ingredients

ground oats and raw honey.

Recipe for my very gentle Bastille Soap:

• 15% coconut oil
• 85% olive oil
• lye (NaOH)
• your choice of liquid
• 8% superfat
• cure at least 4 – 6 weeks

Picture and recipe from:mamainthekitchen.comunder aCreative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License.