So, I’ve been making some more soap, trying to develop a few new recipes of my own. Ever since my first go at soap-making, I’ve perused the oil selection at Coles with a lot more interest… and came home with a few new goodies to experiment with. Specifically; macadamia oil and avocado oil. Following the good advice a few kind commenters on my previous soap-making post, this time I used a soap calculator to help formulate my quantities, thank you Becky and Barb! for letting me know there was even such a thing! My recipes also contain different proportions of the other oils I already had, olive oil and coconut oil. I’ve been seeking out the paler yellow olive oil now too, because I wanted the natural colours of the new oils to be predominant …
And since I’m providing recipes here that include the highly toxic and corrosive compound sodium hydroxide, here are a few very important safety tips…
WHEN HANDLING NaOH, ALWAYS WEAR RUBBER GLOVES, PROTECTIVE EYEWEAR AND CLOTHING THAT COMPLETELY COVERS YOUR ARMS.
- Never let it get into contact with your skin. When mixing into water, work outside as much as possible so as to avoid inhaling the fumes. Never under any circumstances put your face over or near the container you are mixing it in.
- Ensure you are not going to be disturbed for the time you are working with it. Keep all pets and children well away.
- If you must take your lye solution inside, keep all windows open and work underneath a range hood with the fan on full blast.
- In the case of spills, clean up with copious amounts of water… i.e. a garden hose if outside. If you do happen to splash some on your skin, IMMEDIATELY put the affected area underneath a tap, and flush with water running fully over the area for several minutes at least. If you can see a visible burn or the area continues to sting and burn after copious flushing then seek medical attention immediately. NaOH is not to be trifled with!
Making your lye solution; FOR ALL RECIPES: When mixing NaOH into water, put the full volume of your cool or cold water into a clean, thick sided, glass container that has no cracks, and can hold at least twice the volume of the water you are working with. Add the NaOH to the water, a little at a time, stirring with a metal spoon. You can stir with a wooden spoon, but you may find the solution gets a little discoloured with tannins from the wood. NEVER add water to NaOH, ALWAYS ADD NaOH TO WATER. This is because as NaOH dissolves in water it generates heat and fumes, and is potentially explosive. If you have trouble remembering which is the correct way to mix the two: when I was at school we learnt this little ditty… and the exact same principle applies to working with a strong alkali like NaOH.
(Picture of a gravestone)
“May her rest be long and placid,
she added water to the acid;
The other girl did as she ought-er,
and added acid to the water”
Substitute alkali for acid, it’s the same situbar. After the solution mixes clear, it will be quite hot. Do not seal the container. Supervise it until it cools before using.
Moving on…. here are my recipes:
Macadamia Soap
I absolutely love the dreamy cafe-au-lait colour I got with this mixture! whether it’s horrible to use or not I do not know yet, but will definitely update here and write a little review when it’s cured and I use it.
200g coconut oil
500g macadamia oil
300g olive oil
300mL water
137g NaOH
See the above safety note for handling and mixing NaOH.
Gently heat the coconut oil until it is liquid, then add the other oils.
Outside, carefully add NaOH to the water, a little at a time and stirring. Let it sit for a few minutes, uncovered and under constant supervision, until jar feels lukewarm and no longer hot, and fumes are no longer visibly emanating from the surface before mixing it into the oil.
Pour NaOH solution all at once into the oil, and commence stirring with a stick mixer not running. After a few minutes of this, turn the stick mixer on and keep “pulsing” and mixing for about 10 minutes or until the mixture becomes visibly “gelatinous” in appearance.
This mixture took a lot longer to set harder than my previous batches… at least 48 hours before it was hard enough to remove from the moulds without distorting them at all. I’m hoping this means it will be a really nice, moisturising soap 
This recipe has larger quantities and so obviously produced a lot more soap than my previous recipes, I had an old Brie container and used this to mould the excess into a nicely oval-shaped bar of soap, but it was still overflowing and these bars are each quite a bit bigger and thicker. I chopped up some macadamias and sprinkled them on top for both decoration and as an identifier down the track, seemed like a good idea at the time! but then I decided I don’t like how it looks on top of the soap and will think of something different in the future…
Avocado Soap
250mL avocado oil
400mL olive oil
110g coconut oil
200mL water
90g NaOH
See the above safety note for handling and mixing NaOH.
Exact same procedure as for the previous recipe…
This mixture got to the gel stage a lot more rapidly than the macadamia soap. The avocado oil was quite a strong natural “grass” green in colour, which gives this soap its creamy yellow-y green colour. This is the entire batch from this recipe: avocado oil is quite expensive and the bottle a small one, thus the smaller quantities.
I just used my 24x24cm cake pan lined with baking paper, there wasn’t enough mixture for the silicone moulds too. The bars are quite deep though.
Just a note on how I’m choosing these quantities, it’s pretty easy to let the olive oil just take over your recipe since it’s so cheap compared to other oils, however I wanted to keep the “special” oil up there as a major-ish component and not just a token one! While for sure, costs are something you always want to consider, I still want to experiment with the more interesting oils, like macadamia and avocado and am quite excited to use both these ones once they cure too!
this is the full quantity of soap produced from this recipe… yes, the avocados are there for pretty, illustrative purposes only and are not required for the recipe!
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