I Soaped !!!

Well OK this wont be of much interest to most of you :)

My other hobby is hand making soap and related items like creams lotions shampoo etc - except that I haven't done a darn thing on this hobby all year. A few weeks ago I rejoined a couple of soaping lists and joined in on a swap that was just beginning. The theme of the swap was fruit or vegetable. The soap had to include some part of a fruit or vegetable in it. I could have simply pulled out my soaping journal and made my triple lemon (uses lemon juice instead of water, lemon essential oil and grated lemon rind) but I thought I would try something completely different. So I chose Celery!

Last night I dropped over to my local shopping mall, bought an entire head of celery and took it around to the local juice bar and asked them to juice/liquefy it for me. They did. We ended up with around 500ml of liquidised celery. I also went into a supermarket and bought ground celery seed.

This afternoon after DK's wonderful visit,, I unpacked my soaping supplies and went for it.

I made one of my standard recipes:

250gm coconut oil
250gm lard
250gm olive oil
250gm Rice Bran Oil
136gm lye
250gm water (now celery juice)

Now soap is made in the following steps:

1. Melt all the oils fats together but keep the temps low - under 45 degrees Celsius - so that you can touch the outside of the pot with your hand and its warm, but not hot.

2. Mix the lye crystals into the water. Or in this case, celery juice. To minimise any adverse reactions keep this cool - do it in a water bath, or freeze your juice before pouring the lye crystals over.

3. When both mixtures are around room temp - pour the lye solution into the oils and start mixing. I use a stick blender to speed up production. When it starts to look like runny custard, stop and pour into your moulds. Insulate the moulds and leave for 48 hours. Then turn out onto a well ventilated rack and let harden for 4 weeks - put in the shower and enjoy.

Of course you must take appropriate precautions when using the lye solution because it is strong enough to burn, scar, blind etc. But when safety is observed, its just like mixing up a cake batter and popping it in the fridge :)

In this case, instead of using water, I used the celery juice. I also shook some of the ground celery seed into the bottom of the moulds - so hopefully there may be a dusting of celery seed on the top of the soap when it is un-moulded. I also mixed some of the ground celery seed through the oil mix to give the resultant soap some texture.

Hmmm - pity I only bought enough coconut oil for the swap batches ... I feel like making some more now .....