Home-made soap

Inspired by my best friend, spurred by my financial situation, encouraged by the experimentalist inside me ... I decided to make some soap. Not only to use it but also because bars of natural home-made soap make a perfect Christmas present for all the women in my family. Although men would probably need it more :-)

I was quite busy while mixing the ingredients so I don't have any photos of the process. Which turns to be very simple. This is the recipe I used:

450 g olive oil
50 g coconut oil
63 g NaOH
95 g deionised water
four leaves of aloe vera

0. Prepare aloe vera. Just take the leaves and squeeze out the gel. It should look something like this:

1. Carefully dissolve NaOH in water. If you're have any idea about chemistry, you know how to do it. If you don't, google for safety instructions! Basically I took care that the kids were asleep, wore gloves, and put smaller amounts of NaOH into water under constant mixing. The reaction is so exotermic that the water can start to boil if too much sodium hydroxide is added at a time. Go slow, mix and let the solution cool to about 40 deg C. I mixed it in a plastic jar with a Teflon spoon.

2. Heat olive and coconut oil in a (stainless steel) pot to about 40 deg C.

3. Add the NaOH solution to the oils and mix. And mix. And mix. And mix... I used a hand blender and took care that the blender did not overheat (repeatedly switching it on/off) and of course took care that the mixture did not splash around. Mix until the famous "trace" appears: when you lift a spoon, the liquid leaves a trace on the surface. You'll know it once you see it, trust me. It took me about half an hour.

4. Add aloe vera. Now, maybe it was just me, maybe it was just the plant but as soon as I added that gel, the mixture thickened and changed colour from olive green to yellow.

5. Pour into a mould, cover it with blankets and let it dry for 24 hours.

6. Take the soap out, cut it into pieces and let it dry in a dry place for three to four weeks. Now - the friend of mine who was making it without aloe vera said that at this stage the soap is still soft, spongy and that indeed it took it a couple of weeks to harden. Well, mine was hard after the first 24 hours. I still let it dry for four weeks, just to be sure. After I cut it I also impressed the letter M :-)

7. After a month, I checked the pH of the soap. A test with pH indicator shows that pH was between 9 and 10, which is just perfect. The commercial soaps I had at home had exactly the same values.

8. And of course a present isn't a real present unless it is neatly wrapped.