Green Papaya Soap with Lard

We almost ran out of cold process soaps in my household.  Finally, I got a chance to make a new batch of soaps at 11/28/11.  My oldest daughter really loves green papaya soaps.   These soaps can reduce skin blemishes and are mild on skin.

When I was preparing the ingredients, I found out not only I ran out of shortening also did sweet almond oil.    It was easy to replace different oils with recalculation for lye and liquid.   I also wanted to use some houttuynia cordata tea (good for eczema skin) I brew a while back with some milk which was about to expire.

This is the revised receipe for this batch :
coconut oil    400g
palm oil      400g
lard             600g
olive oil       600g
evening primrose oil   80g
houttuynia cordata tea   472g   milk  194g
bee wax   120g
smashed green papaya  320g
Lye   315g

 I got to work on this batch at 10pm after children were in bed.  I finished the batch around 10:30pm.
1.  I started with heating the hard oil (lard, coconut oil, palm oil and bee wax) to 85℃.  The oil temperature was too high so I used ice bath to bring down the temperature to 70℃.
2.  I proceed to mix the liquid with lye.  I also used ice bath to bring down the lye mixture to 52℃.  
3.  I put in the soft oil (olive oil and  evening primrose oil ) to further bring down the oil temperature of step 1 from 70℃ to 62℃.
4.  At this point, I started to blend  oil with lye.  Until the soap traced, the temperature I monitored was 54℃.

In this batch, I mixed in all the remainder soap pieces  in.    Soap making is such a green way to reduce waste.

                                  After the soaps cure, pH test is around 9-10.

Lard Laundry Bar Soap

 This batch helped me  find out what is the quantity limit  .  In my biggest soap pot, the oil  cannot exceed 4, 000g,  and lye solution cannot exceed 3,000g.  That is 7,000 ml total of soap mixture.  Beyond this amount,  I would have trouble using stick blender to go through the whole soap making procedure. 

June 17, 2011     Room Temperature 78℉,   Humidity 35% 。 Four times the original recipe.
oil temperature at 54℃,   lye solution at  74℃,  mixing at 57℃。   It took 10 minute to trace well.

lard                          2,400g
coconut oil             1,600g
lye                                636g
distilled water        1,588g
borax                         12 TB
sugar                              1 C
ammonia                      1  C
vitamin E oil         32 drops

This soap took 24 hours to cure.  The cleansing power of this recipe  is excellent for cotton clothing.

  After I pour the trace soap into the soy milk cartons, I stapled the opening.  I also use empty Pringles containers.

 Part of the laundry soap.  I cut soap blocks into quarters for easy shredding.

 It took some patience to shread the soap. The shreadded soap dissolve in laundry faster.

I put the shredded soaps in paper carton to let them dry out.

Photos Of My Soaps

↑   Papaya Curls with Green Tea Oat Soap

↑   Adding color pigment to soaps. These soaps were gifts for relatives and friends in Taiwan.

These are some of the soaps I made during 2010.   During that time, I experimented  adding powders to my soaps a lot.  Oat, green tea powders, Chinese herbal powders.........