Texas Sunrise Cold Process Soap Recipe

Ingredients:

8 oz. Coconut Oil
8 oz. Palm Oil
8 oz. Palm Kernel Oil
16 oz. Avocado Oil
13 oz. Cocoa Butter
42 oz. Pomace Olive Oil
6 oz. Almond Oil
4 oz. Castor Oil
1 oz. Sesame Oil

38 oz. Water
14.5 oz. Lye

Combine at 90 degrees.

10 capsules of Beta Carotene provitamin A (10,000 I.U.)
1 oz. Castor Oil with 1/4 tsp. paste food color

I combined the Beta Carotene with the castor oil and added it with all of the oils. After I poured the soap into the mold, I added the paste food color. (I was unsure if this method would work, so I placed a divider in the middle of the soap. I swirled the castor oil into 1/2 of the soap and left the remaining half plain.)

Learning experiences with this batch… The last time I used the paste food color, I mixed it with a little soap before adding to the whole batch. The food color did not fully mix with the soap and the resulting batch had bursts of color in places. I thought that this produced an interesting effect. With this batch, I wanted to use the Beta Carotene as the base color. I was afraid that if I mixed the food color with a little soap that the yellow soap would react with the pink food color and would turn a funny shade of orange. I decided to solve that problem by mixing the food color with the castor oil. My intent was to use two colors and swirl them in at one time. I chose a blue that I thought would produce a cool effect. (I did mix a little soap with the blue and it turned an odd shade of green, so I canned the two toned effect.) The castor oil did not disperse the food color into small bits of color. I had larger “pockets” than I wanted. When the castor oil was swirled into the soap, it seemed to just float on the surface. After incubation, the oil was absorbed and produced the desired effect. The next problem I encountered was that as I cut the bars, some of the color came off on my hands. (This had not been a problem with the first batch when I mixed the food color with the little bit of soap.) As the soap has cured, the oil has been absorbed more and more, setting the color.

submitted by Ann C.