Small Batch Honey Castile Soap Recipe (from Shaker Soap video)
Hello soap makers!
This post gives the written recipe for the lovely honey castile soap batch I made for my ‘Shaker Soap’ video.
This is a very small batch of soap, making only 553g/1.2 pounds of soap batter in total, but I thought I’d share the recipe for those who are interested (you may want to scale up my formula or try different variations of your own).
If you have never made soap before, please START HERE and ensure you have a good understanding of the essentials of cold process soap making before you attempt this or any other soap recipe. This video provides everything you need to know regarding soap making safety.
Small Batch Honey Castile Soap
Ingredients:
90g water (divided, 45g for the honey solution and 45g ice cubes)
7g honey (1 scant metric teaspoon)
52g sodium hydroxide (mine is 98% pure granules)
400g extra virgin olive oil
No fragrance or colour was added to this soap. You could add 8-12g of non-irritating essential oil to this batch if desired. Fragrance oils should be added according to suppliers recommended usage rate.
This recipe is calculated to have:
3% superfat (I like a low superfat for my Castile soap. High superfats can inhibit lather and this soap is already challenged in the lather department!)
1.7:1 water to lye ratio (that means the water weight is 1.7 times the weight of the sodium hydroxide)
I used Soap Calc to calculate this recipe.
Method:
Watch the video demonstration of this recipe on Youtube.
Assemble your ingredients and equipment and ensure you have the required personal protective equipment (goggles and gloves minimum).
Carefully weigh the sodium hydroxide into a small container and secure with a lid. Set aside.
Decide how you want to handle the honey for this recipe. In the video I dissolved it into half of the water for the lye solution, but you could also attempt to mix it into the oils/soap batter separately (I think this works better if you are using a stick blender). In hot-process soap I mix honey through at the end of the cook as demonstrated in this video).
Prepare a soap mould. This recipe makes approximately 553g/1.2 pounds of raw soap batter.
Weigh the water/ice combination into a jug to make the lye solution. Dissolve the honey into the water part first if you want to try my video method.
With safety gear on, gently pour the sodium hydroxide into the ice water and stir to dissolve. Once dissolved, set this solution aside somewhere safe while you prepare your oil and mixing container.
Weigh the olive oil into your shaker bottle (make sure your bottle is large enough to hold the entire soap batch with room to spare).
Carefully pour the lye solution into the oil and begin to stir by hand.
Securely attach the lid of your shaker and shake the soap until it reaches emulsification.
Pour the soap into the mould and cover.
If you would like to attempt to replicate the ‘Aero bar’ appearance of my ‘silicone rash’ soap, use individual cavity silicone moulds and place the freshly poured soap into an oven preheated to 65°C/150°F and leave it there until the soap fully gels. Please read the information about ‘Silicone Rash’, ‘CPOP’, ‘Gel Phase’, ‘Saponification’ and other related terms on THIS PAGE before you proceed. This recent blog post also discusses gelling soap in depth.
If you would prefer to keep things simple, use a log mould instead and wrap your soap to ensure gelling if that is important to you. You could also pour this soap into individual silicone moulds and leave it at room temperature to saponify slowly without gelling.
Once the soap has hardened and cooled (if CPOP’ing), remove from the mould and cut if required.
Place on a rack somewhere dry and airy and cure for a minimum of 6 weeks (the longer the better).
I’m keen to try this soap after it has cured for a couple of months. I love its gentle honey-olive scent. This is a very satisfying soap to make and use, perfect for dry environments where the skin requires some extra care.
Enjoy, and let me know how you go with your own ‘shaker soap’ experiments :)
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