How to: Create Custom Soaps From A Single Recipe

This is a follow-up to the post, Soap Making 101. Today, I’d like to show you how I took one simple, plain recipe and doctored it up to create a variety of custom soaps.

The point I’d like for you to take away from this, is not that you should follow my recipes exactly (though you’re certainly free to do so), but to use the idea as a jumping off point to create your own unique products from your own favorite recipe. Don’t be afraid to get creative and change things around!

My foray into making homemade soap started several years ago when my son was little and had a ton of allergies. Trying to find products that were gluten free, dairy free, corn free, soy free AND unscented was impossible. For a time, he took baths with plain water since I couldn’t find anything suitable to wash him with.

After a lot of research, I finally took the plunge into making my own soap. I found a fantastic web page (Miller’s Homemade Soap Pages) with a fairly easy looking recipe, bought all of the ingredients I’d need and even a special pot to mix it in! Since I was scared of the lye, my husband helped me. We did everything exactly right… or so we thought. Our first several batches were disasters. Turns out, we didn’t stir long enough and it wasn’t until we bought a stick blender, that we had success.

The recipe that I’m about to share with you, is the same recipe that I have used for all of my soap making years. I often substitute different oils and butters for parts of it (using a lye calculator – more on that in a minute), but the framework is always the same.

One more thing – this recipe contains palm oil. I am aware of the controversy surrounding palm oil and only buy certified organic, sustainably farmed from Mountain Rose Herbs. You can read this wikipedia article on it, but for an over-simplified summary: the over-development of palm plantations in Indonesia is leading to rapid deforestation and critically endangering some species of animals; whereas in Africa, the UN is encouraging small farmers to grow palm oil on an environmentally friendly small scale to improve their livelihoods. This is why I encourage others to buy sustainably farmed palm oil or use a recipe that does not contain it. (Check the Soap Making page on my blog for a selection of palm-free recipes.)

You can also omit the palm oil completely and use something like the following ratios: 34 ounces coconut oil, 48 ounces olive oil, 25 ounces distilled water/other liquid, 11.9 ounces lye. Superfat with two to three extra tablespoons of oils/butters at trace. (You can see an example of this version if you click over to my Oatmeal & Honey Soap Recipe post.)

Basic Soap Recipe

This recipe is plain and frankly, boring. It served us well for a while, but I knew I could improve upon it. (More on that below!) However, it’s a good one to start with if you are just learning how to make soap or have super sensitive skin prone to allergic reactions.

• 26 ounces coconut oil
• 40 ounces olive oil
• 16 ounces palm kernel oil
• 26 ounces distilled water
• 12.13 ounces lye (if your scale only measures one digit past the decimal, go with 12.1 ounces of lye)

Make soap according to the directions in Soap Making 101. This makes a hard, long lasting, unscented plain off-white bar. I sized it to fit my wooden box molds which are non-standard and homemade – the inner dimensions of the molds are: 16 inches by 11.5 inches by 2 inches.  Here’s a great site that will tell you how to calculate how big a batch of soap you should make for the size mold you have. Remember you can easily adjust amounts using a lye calculator.

I liked the plain soap because it didn’t break out my son. However, his eczema and dry skin were still a problem, so I set out to tackle that by creating a “Healing Skin Bar.” I went through my cabinets and gathered up every anti-inflammatory, good-for-the-skin herb I could find and threw it all in this recipe. I also super-fatted the soap which means I added extra oils at trace (right before pouring into the mold.) Anything you add at this time is going to contribute moisturizing properties to your soap. You don’t want to over-do it though or your bar will be too soft or oily and will be more prone to rancidity.

Healing Skin Bar

For this bar, I substitute herbal tea for the water using some or all of the following herbs that I keep on hand: calendula, lavender, comfrey leaf, plantain leaf, chamomile, goldenseal, lemon balm/melissa, boswellia, rose petals &/or leaves, violet flowers &/or leaves and olive leaf powder. Just put your dried and/or fresh herbs and flowers in a jar and pour simmering hot water over them. Let this steep overnight, strain and use just as you would water in your recipe. It might smell a little funny and turn a weird color when mixed with the lye, but that’s perfectly normal and will disappear by the time you have a finished bar.

• 26 ounces coconut oil
• 40 ounces olive oil (*see note below)
• 16 ounces palm kernel oil
• 26 ounces herbal tea
• 12.13 ounces lye
• At trace add up to 3 tablespoons of additional skin-healing oils/butters such as: tamanu oil, softened shea or mango butter, rose-hip seed oil, jojoba oil and/or castor oil.
• Also at trace, add 2 teaspoons tea tree oil, 1 teaspoon lavender essential oil, and 1/2 teaspoon peppermint essential oil. I sometimes add several drops of Blue Chamomile essential oil and/or Peru Balsam essential oil if I have them on hand. Rosemary antioxidants add a layer of protection against early rancidity, especially when dealing with fresh herbs and flowers, so I add around 1/2 to 1 teaspoon to virtually every batch of soap I make.

*Note: I usually keep a variety of olive oils on hand infused with calendula, comfrey, plantain and violet leaf. Any or all of these can be substituted for plain olive oil for even more skin benefits. (To infuse olive oil, put a handful of dried herbs/flowers in the bottom of a glass jar and pour olive oil to the top. Cap and let sit in a dark cabinet for about 4 weeks, shaking occasionally. Strain and store for about a year.)

This recipe is sized to fit my homemade wooden molds. The inner dimensions are: 16 inches by 11.5 inches by 2 inches.

This soap pairs especially well with my Herbal Healing Salve Recipe.

 Springtime Violet Soap

This is one of my all-time favorite soaps! Every spring, we have loads of violets blooming around here and I love to create different things with them. Even after the blooms are gone, the leaves hang around and are most useful. (See my Violet Leaf Balm, Violet Leaf Honey Cough Syrup & Sweet Springtime Violet Jelly recipes for more ideas of ways to use fresh violets.) Violets are excellent for skin problems (especially eczema), have been used in the treatment of fibrocystic breast disease and are purported to have anti-cancer benefits. I try to incorporate them in my products whenever possible!

To make the violet blossom infusion, collect a jar full of violet flowers and pour hot water over them. Cover with a saucer and let steep a few hours. Strain before using in your recipe.

•  26 ounces coconut oil
• 40 ounces olive oil and/or violet leaf infused olive oil (*see note below)
• 16 ounces palm kernel oil
• 26 ounces violet blossom infusion
• 12.13 ounces lye
• At trace, add 1 tablespoon shea butter & 1 tablespoon jojoba oil then several drops each of blue chamomile essential oil (anti-inflammatory, great for skin), bergamot (reduces inflammation), lavender (calms & heals skin) and ylang-ylang (eases tension & stress).

To get the green swirl, pour most of the soap mixture into the molds, reserving around a cup or so. Mix a small amount of chlorella powder with olive oil to make a thick, dark green paste. Working quickly, add a little bit at a time to the reserved soap mixture until you get the shade of green you like. (It will fade over time, so go a little darker than you think you’d want.) Drizzle this over the top of your plain soap, then swirl in much the same way you would when making a marble cake.

This recipe is sized to fit my homemade wooden molds. The inner dimensions are: 16 inches by 11.5 inches by 2 inches.

*Note: Violet leaf infused olive oil is wonderful in this recipe (and many others!) To make with fresh leaves, put a handful of leaves in a jar and cover with olive oil. Set the jar down in a pot filled with a few inches of water. On lowish heat, bring to just under a simmer. Warm the oil for several hours or until it has taken on a green hue. (If your heat is too high, you’ll fry your leaves which is NOT good.) To make with dried leaves, put a handful in a jar and cover with olive oil. Cap and store in a dark cabinet for about four weeks, shaking occasionally. Strain. This infused oil, made with dried leaves, will last around a year.

Sunflower Soap

The color for this soap comes from substituting a small amount of palm fruit oil for the palm kernel oil. Palm fruit oil is a very dark orangish red instead of palm kernel’s pure whiteness. I accidentally ordered an entire bucketful once, instead of palm kernel oil, so had to come up with ways to use it up! I also wanted to add some sunflower oil to the mix, so had to change things around quite a bit. It’s fine to subtract some of your olive oil and replace it with something else like sunflower oil and make other changes like subbing mango butter for part of the coconut oil, as long as you run it through the lye calculator, because as you can see, we don’t need quite as much lye with this combination of oils.

• 22 ounces coconut oil
• 4 ounces mango butter
• 34 ounces olive oil (*see note below)
• 6 ounces sunflower oil
• 12 ounces palm kernel oil
• 4 ounces palm fruit oil (this orange-red oil gives soap the yellow color)
• 26 ounces  of infusion or tea of sunflower & calendula petals and water
• 11.85 ounces lye
• At trace add: 1 to 2 tablespoons tamanu or other beneficial oil. You can also add some lemon or other essential oil for scent if desired. (start with a teaspoon or two of essential oil and do a sniff test from there to determine how much more to add. I like barely scented or unscented items, so don’t use a lot of essential oils unless I’m adding them for skin benefits. Feel free to add more than what I call for if you like more noticeable scents in your soaps.)

(*Note: I use lemon balm infused olive oil, for part of this recipe.)

This recipe is sized to fit my homemade wooden molds. The inner dimensions are: 16 inches by 11.5 inches by 2 inches.

I have more recipes, including the rosa rugosa and oatmeal & honey soaps pictured in the top photo and below, that are based off of the basic bar recipe as well, but have the palm oil omitted. These are in separate posts and indexed on the Soap Making Page so they don’t get lost in a long post such as this one.