Botanical Formulations

View Original

Sunflower Seed and Honey Soap

Previously I showed you how I made the gentle, low foaming, Honeycomb Soap.  This looks very similar but I used different ingredients.  It contains a variety of different oils and butters as well as beeswax.  I used castor oil to add a creamier lather.

What’s in it?

Coconut oil is solid at room temperature and starts to melt at around 24c.  It is an oily oil that adds lots of bubbles and luxurious quality to the soap bar. I used it at 25% in this bar.

Cocoa Butter is a particularly hard butter containing lots of stearic and palmitic acid; as such will give increased harness as well a creamy aesthetic.

Castor oil adds creates a dense foam but when too much is added it can soften the bar.  I used it at 5% and counteracted its softening effects by adding a higher amount of solid oils.

Shea Butter contains high amounts of stearic acid and will add hardness to the bar.  It also has some unsaponifiables that will not convert to soap and will nourish the skin.

Sunflower oil is conditioning, adds suds and is thought to not be used at more than 20% as it creates a soft bar. I combined with hard butters in order to counter this.

The Formula

This soap recipe makes approximately 1.5 kilos of soap mix. I made the batter and separated into two portions. To one I added the turmeric.  I roughly poured the soap from each portion into the mold and then reserved some of the batter to pipe the top of the soap.

SUNFLOWER SEED AND HONEY SOAP
OILS
INGREDIENT % USED GRAMS
Shea Butter 10.00 100.00
Cocoa Butter 10.00 100.00
Beeswax 2.00 20.00
Coconut Oil 25.00 250.00
Castor Oil 5.00 50.00
Sunflower Oil 48.00 480.00
WATER AND LYE
Water - 380 gm
NaOH - 137.61
EXTRAS AND INFO
Honey - 10ml
Tumeric - 4g
Chamomile Essential Oil - 31g
Superfat - 5%
BOTANICALFORMULATIONS.COM

Safety

This tutorial assumes you know safe working practise when making cold processed soap.

How to make it

  1. Create your lye solution by gently pouring your weighed sodium hydroxide into the water and stir until dissolved.

  2. Premix honey in a small amount of water.

  3. Weigh the shea, cocoa butter, beeswax, and coconut oil and heat until melted.

  4. Weight the sunflower oil and castor oil and chamomile essential oil and set aside.

  5. Combine the melted oils with the liquid oils and stick blend until all combined well.

  6. Add the lye solution to the oils and stick blend. Add the honey/water/turmeric mix to the soap batter once it reaches trace.

  7. Separate the mixture into equal parts and add the turmeric to one.

  8. Pour the soap batter in your container.

The Verdict

This soap took a little longer to harden than the Honeycomb Soap but it was still easy to unmold after 24 hours curing.  When used it had a good stable foam. All in all, I am happy with this soap.