Moya, Minnie and I also wanted to do a two colored soap scented with lavender and colored with Fuchsia Lab Color from Bramble Berry.

Lavender Hot Process Soap Recipe

Palm oil – 10 oz
Coconut oil – 10 oz
Olive oil – 6 oz
Rice bran oil – 4 oz
Castor oil – 2 oz

Water – 10 oz
Lye – 4.57 oz (6% SF)
Sodium lactate – .6 oz (I miscalculated the SL for this batch and used only .2 oz. I had in my mind that we were making 1 lb batches. OOPS! Use .6-1 oz and you’ll have much smoother soap.)

1 oz lavender fragrance oil

Step 1 – Make the lye solution.

Step 2 – Measure out the oils into your crock pot. Go ahead to turn on your crock pot to high. Here’s a time saving tip from Moya. If you aren’t using any brittle or really hard oils or butters such as cocoa butter or palm kernel you don’t really have to worry about melting them. Of course if it’s cold where you live and your palm and coconut oil is super hard…go ahead and melt. But if your oils are nice and mooshy…don’t worry about it. So measure out all of the oils and butters and stick blend to mix smooth.

Step 3 – Add the sodium lactate to the lye water. Don’t worry about the temps when you’re hot processing. You don’t have to worry about the lye cooling down.

Step 4 – Gear up in goggles and gloves! Pour the lye solution into the crock pot of oils and mix until you reach trace.

Step 5 – Put the lid on your soap and set to cook. If you are new to hot process soap or are trying out a new crock pot I recommend cooking your soap on medium or if your crock pot has just low and high…set it on low.

Fifteen minutes after setting to cook…here is what we have. You can see the edges started to turn in.

And a bit later…the edges are closing in but there is still a part that hasn’t gelled or turned.

And now you can see it has completely gelled/turned. Give a good stir and let it cook about 5 minutes longer. Then check for zap. To test for zap I like to take a craft stick, put a dab of the soap on it, blow on it to cool and harden and lightly touch it to your tongue. If you get a zap…the soap is not done. Our is done!

Next we added the fragrance.

Since we wanted to color part of our batch we scooped some out into another container and colored with a bit of fuchsia lab color.

Now here’s the fun part! Ours is a bit gloppy (I miscalculated our SL) but Moya made it work! She alternated scooping and packing the different colored soap into the mold. Check this out!

She made sure to pile the soap above the top of the mold. Then she used a spoon handle and scraped off the top to make it smooth and level. Put the extra soap into a cavity mold.

Minnie brought some lavender buds so we put those on top.

*Notice the new mold?! That is a new silicone loaf mold from Bramble Berry! I love it!

Check out the bubbles from cleanup!

Unmold 24 hours later, slice it up and enjoy!

Happy Hot Process Soaping!

-Amanda, Moya and Minnie