Cold Process Soap Recipe without Coconut Oil and Palm Oil

No coconut oil? No Problem! You can still make a wonderfully bubbly bar of soap that's great for sensitive skin free of coconut oil.

Since starting this little blog I’ve had quite a few people email me requesting a coconut oil-free soap due to allergies. And since I love coming up with and testing new recipes – here it is. As a little bonus, it’s even palm oil free as well.

Coconut and palm oil are both hard oils that soap makers rely on to make a bar of soap harder and give it more bubble power. It is possible however to make your own soap without using these two oils. Today I will share my favorite coconut and palm oil free recipe with you. It makes such a nice bar of homemade soap that you wouldn't even notice that these two oils have been swapped out.

I've used this recipe to create a hanger swirl soap, but you can use it as a base recipe and customize to your personal preference. Here on the blog, you'll find many soap projects for this recipe.

Ingredients

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If this is your first time making cold process soap, please read through how to make soap at home before you begin.

This recipe is sized for the Crafter's Choice Loaf Mold, you can resize it for any mold you wish using a lye calculator, like soapcalc.

Recipe (makes 43 oz of soap)

• Olive oil (Pomace) (38%): 11.78 oz. (334g)
• Babassu oil (30%): 9.3 oz. (264g)
• Shea Butter (20%): 6.2 oz. (176g)
• Cocoa butter (7%): 2.17 oz. (61g)
• Castor oil (5%): 1.55oz (44g)
• Distilled Water: 7.73 oz. (219g)
• Lye (Sodium Hydroxide): 4.16 oz. (118g)

I'm using a lye concentration of 35% and a superfat of 7%.

Making a Hanger Swirl Soap (Advanced Technique)

The technique I’m about to show you is definitely not something you would want to attempt as a beginner, but you can certainly use the recipe and create a beautiful one-colored soap. If you prefer using an essential oil you can do so too. I use eocalc to calculate safe usage rates for essential oils.

This soap is a little tricky to make since I'm using a floral fragrance oil. Most floral fragrances and essential oils accelerate trace, meaning your batter can go from nice and fluid to super thick in seconds.

That’s exactly what happened to me in the video. I meant for it to get a little thicker so I could layer it, but I used the stick blender for 2 seconds too long, and uh–oh, I could barely work the colors in.

If you want to see me wrangle this soap into submission, you can see the video here:

Equipment:

• regular soaping equipment

• Hanger tool: I use one I bought from Brambleberry, but you can use a wire clothes hanger and reinforce it with a drinking straw

Colorants and Additives

• 1 teaspoon of titanium dioxide mixed with 1 tablespoon of base oils
• ¾ teaspoon of "Electric Bubblegum" oxide (Brambeberry) mixed in 1 tablespoon of oil
• ¾ teaspoon of "Hydrated Chrome Green" oxide (Brambleberry) mixed in 1 tablespoon of oil
• 3 teaspoon of Sodium Lactate added to cooled lye solution

Fragrance

• French Lime Blossom (Majestic Mountain Sage): 24g

Instructions

1. Let lye solutions and oils cool to room temperature
2. Add fragrance oil to your oils
3. Combine oils and lye solution, blend using an immersion blender until light trace
4. Separate 2 x 14 oz. of the main batter into separate bowls
5. Add pink color to one small part and green color to the other, stir or whisk thoroughly
6. Add titanium dioxide to the remaining main batch, stir or whisk thoroughly
7. By now trace should be fairly thick so you can start layering without one layer breaking into the other
8. Start with one layer of white, then one layer of pink, then one layer of green. Take care that you leave enough batter for another layer of each as well as enough to deck out the top (this is something I didn't do well - my bottom layers are much bigger than the top one). Also, take the time to spread and smooth each layer as you go evenly.
9. Continue with another layer of white, pink, green
10. When you're done layering, tap your mold thoroughly on the table. Thick trace tends to harbor big air pockets.
11. Take your hanger tool and, starting at one side of the mold, very slowly push it straight down
12. Keeping it at the bottom of the mold slide it ¼ inch to the side and slowly pull straight up again
13. Move it over the top a ¼ inch and push it straight down again
14. Continue until you reach the other side of the mold
15. Move your hanger tool just slightly next to where you did your last pass and start over until you reach the other side again
16. Use the remaining white soap to cover the top and smooth it out
17. With a small spoon scoop out little bits of pink soap and create little dollops evenly spread on the top
18. Do the same thing with the green soap and place a little dollop right next to a pink one
19. If you wish to gel your soap, place in oven at 170º F for an hour. You can read more about it here.
20. After 36 hours unmold, cut into bars and cure for 4 weeks.

Until next time. Happy Tinkering!