>Foaming Bath Butter?

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I want to see what I can do with a good old cream soap base…

As my cream soap bible I am going to use some great information from a great Cream Soap guide to come up with my own recipe.

I am not an experienced cream soap maker… I have tried it before and it was OK but definitely a beginner’s batch.

So here I am off to try again! With a particular goal in mind: I am hoping for a fairly stiff yet gloriously bubbly soap base.

What are my choices of oils? Stearic acid is the base standard of any cream soap recipe. Coconut oil will be my next choice for the mass of bubbles it lends to soap. As a third choice, Palm oil is an old standby as it is supposed to also help give a denser soap. After all these workhorses thrown in the mix I am left deciding what to add for sexiness and softness…

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Castor oil is an amazing additive to soap, but in cream soap it might not lend the kind of properties I am looking for in this particular batch – it is supposed to make for a softer more pliable soap and that is not what I had in mind. I would have to limit it somewhat in my formula. Additionally, I am thinking of using Cacao butter as well as Shea butter. Now these butters’ fatty acid profiles are made up of quite a large percentage of Palmitic and Stearic acids. Once saponified, I am guessing that they would also help give me the firmness that I am looking for in my final product. And to make up the rear of my formula, last but not least, good old Olive oil for its conditioning goodness.

So there I have my oil choices for my formula…

I have decided on the following percentages:

Oil Ingredients	Percentages	Gram weight
Stearic acid	55%	275g
Coconut oil	20%	100g
Palm oil	10%	50g
Castor oil	2%	10g
Cacao butter	2%	10g
Sheabutter	1%	5g
Olive Oil	10%	50g

I like to use soapcalc as a lye calculator but there are others too.

Using a 5% superfat in the calculation the amount of Sodium Hydroxide (NaOH) needed to make a regular batch of sodium soap according to soapcalc using this recipe is 70.605g.

Based on the way Catherine Failor described in her booklet “Making Cream Soap”

The correct KOH and NaOH weights are derived from the lye weight calculated on soapcalc by multiplying the previous lye weight by 0.217 giving the total amount of Sodium hydroxide needed for our recipe. Multiplying the sodium hydroxide amount by 5 gives the weight amount of Potassium Hydroxide needed and adding the two weights and multiplying the combined weight of the two types of hydroxides by 6 gives the total water weight needed.

NaOH weight needed	KOH weight needed	Water weight needed
70.605g x 0.217 = 15.321g NaOH	15.321g x 5 = 76.605g KOH	(76.605g + 15.321g) x 6 = 551.556g Water

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I have decided to reduce the water weight by half to make for a shorter cook time. It also allows for adding your own choice of additional liquids later to make up for the difference. Due to water that would have been lost during cooking you might not have to add the full-reduced amount later to get the right consistency you want.

If I can get my hands on some Aloe Vera I would like to add that to the soap instead of water. According to my guide, Aloe Vera helps lower the soaps pH slightly and it also boosts the lather. I would not be able to vouch for this information but it does sound like a great additive to me.

The amount of glycerine needed is calculated as 55% of the total amount of Stearic Acid in the recipe.

Now, you could just use the percentage of stearic acid you have added to the recipe but when using soapcalc it handily gives you the total recipe’s stearic acid  %. In my recipe it is 57%

So the amount Glycerine needed comes to 0.55 x 57% = 31.35% of oil weight and that is 156.75g glycerine in my 500g batch.

As a supercream at the end of cook I am going to use a mix of Stearic acid and glycerine. I am going to follow my guide and use 1.5% of the oil weight in additional stearic acid. The amount of glycerine needed is calculated at 1.5 times the amount of stearic acid added. I have decided to add an additional 1.5% of oil weight of Shea butter at this point. This is experimental and not what my guide did. C. Failor suggests using 3-5% stearic acid at superfat and the guide reduced this as the whole recipe used a 5% superfat at the start. He also didn’t want to use too much free stearic acid because of irritancy issues. I’d just like to have more free Shea butter in the product at the end of cook.

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Finally as soon as I get the following ingredients all ready and measured and I have the time… wish me luck!

I hope to have good news to report soon.

Oils & Butters and initial glycerine	gram
Stearic acid	275g
Coconut oil	100g
Palm oil	50g
castor oil	10g
Cacao butter	10g
Sheabutter	5g
Olive Oil	50g
glycerine	157g
Liquids
water	175g
coconut milk	100g
Lyes:
Sodium Hydroxide	15.321g
Potassium Hydroxide	76.605g
Additives
banana	60g
yogurt	60g
honey	30g
Kaolin clay	15g
Supercream
glycerin	11.25g
stearic acid	1.5g
Shea butter	7.5g
Aloe vera gel as needed for texture
preservative as needed for total weight

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