Here is my Eucalyptus Spearmint bars of soap I used the Sandy Maine book again and added some Greed French Clay for marble effect and Eucalyputus Spearmint Fragrance Oil. Again with Sandy's Maine recipe, it turned out real nice and smells amazing. Here is the recipe and instructions how to make:
32 oz Crisco All Vegetable Oil (new w/palm)
24 oz Coconut Oil (76 degree)
24 oz Olive Oil
2 oz Sweet Almond Oil
4 tsp. French Green Clay for colour
5 tsp. Ground Pumice
30.4 oz Distilled Water
11.45 oz Sodium Hydroxide (Lye)
With your tare scale measure your ingredients. I start with the Olive Oil set aside. Then I measure my coconut and crisco and place them into a stainless steel pot for melting on the stove. Before I put the element on I measure out my distilled water and place that into my other stainless pot and put it in the kitchen sink and open the window. Then measure the lye.
Once I've done all that I mix the lye into the water and stir so it gets properly melted in the water and then I turn the stove on at medium heat and melt the coconut and crisco oils so they become liquid. Once they are liquified I take off the stove and then add the olive oil. At this stage the lye and the oils need to be cooled down to at least 110 degrees. This is where you test the temp with your candy thermometers.
While things are cooling down I line my molds with wax paper to have them ready. You can do this before hand but I find it takes a good 1/2 hour for things to cool so I do it then gives me something to do while I wait.
Of course having your stick blender ready, and your other ingredients handy by the stick blender, should be the next thing you do. Its just like baking. Then your not running.
Okay so now you are at 110 degrees. you should have your rubber gloves on too as now you take your lye and pour it into your oil pot. You will see right away it mixes into your oil like heavy white pudding. Take your stick blender immerse it into the pot then turn it on and blend. When you notice that the mix is turning thick like pudding and the mixture stays on the blender and leaves trace marks on top you know your soap is at trace.
Now take your Fragrance Oil and pour into the soap mixture. Give it a good few blasts with the stick blender. Now add your ground pumice stone and stir it in, you can stir with the stick blender on the off mode to mix it in.
Now for the Green Clay. Because I wanted to marble the soap, I took about a cup of the soap mixture and poured it into the container with the clay and mixed it with a wire whisk, when I felt it was mixed enough I poured it into the pot. (ITP) and did not mix it thouroughly into the soap as I didn't want all the soap to turn green. I poured it in gave it just a quick stir and thats it! Ready to pour into the molds.
I had two molds ready to go. Pour the soap into the molds and smooth out with a spatchula so its even. I cover the molds with a couple of layers of plastic wrap and set aside to saponify. I also have a nice piece of heavy bubble wrap I put on top of the molds and then cover them with an old bath towel. Now you have to wait for the soap to do its thing. 36 hours, at least! Just leave it to cook. Its hard not to peak and smell. but don't as you want the soap to stay hot and warm plus you don't want soap ash to form on top.
After your bars have sat undisturbed for 36 hours you can take them out of the mold. The soap logs you have created are ready to cut into bars. Going back into the blog I have expalined my use of a mitre box for cutting the bars.
I got 44 bars out of this batch of soap and it yields 5 pounds. One of best bars to date! My fragrance oils, lye, coconut oil were all ordered from
http://www.saffireblue.com/
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