In November, I participated as a vendor in the Dickens by the Creek show. For the show, I had made some Gingerbread houses with some cavity molds I had bought at HEB (a famous Texan grocery store) last year. It looks like this mold. (affiliate link).
My plan was to make a gingerbread house “village”, unfortunately, I did not take a picture of the display but it was essentially the Gingerbread house soaps with some pine tree soaps and snowman soaps in between. The second time it looked like this:
(Btw, I you want to see my small Christmas village setup at home click here – it is not soap)
To my surprise, at the first show a lady grabbed and bought them all, also asked if I had one more. I figured she wanted them as stocking stuffers or for a gift exchange. (Same thing happened with the snowman soaps I had made with extruder discs.)
Having sold out those soaps, I needed to make more for my next show in December, and since I could only do six at a time with that mold, I thought I would attempt to make some with the sculpted layers technique. I had tried that in the past, and had also piped the tops, which was time consuming and made for a pretty heavy soap. This time I wanted to avoid the piping part, and make smaller / simpler soaps, so I made two scrapers, one for the overall triangular shape and the other for the snowed in roof. To keep the positioning precise, I made them to specifically fit my 12″ tall and skinny mold. The 1” bars weighed 3 oz once cured and the 2” weighed 6 oz.
Scroll down to see how I made them, recipe and supplies links.
Needed Ingredients
| Ingredient | Gram(s) | Ounce(s) | Pounds(s) | Oil % |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Coconut Oil, 76 deg | 182.57 | 6.44 | 0.40 | 23% |
| Ricinus Oil (Castor Oil) | 47.63 | 1.68 | 0.11 | 6% |
| Karite Butter (Shea) | 87.32 | 3.08 | 0.19 | 11% |
| Olive Oil – All Grades | 246.07 | 8.68 | 0.54 | 31% |
| Tallow, Beef | 230.20 | 8.12 | 0.51 | 29% |
| Ingredient | Gram(s) | Ounce(s) | Pounds(s) | Batch % |
| NaOH (5% Superfat) | 104.37 | 3.68 | 0.23 | 9.20% |
| KOH (5% Superfat) | 7.72 | 0.27 | 0.02 | 0.68% |
| Water (34% Lye + 66% Water Solution) | 217.60 | 7.68 | 0.48 | 19.17% |
| Total Oils | 793.79 | 28 | 1.75 | 69.94% |
| Soap Weight (Pre-Cook) | 1,134.93 | 40.03 | 2.50 | 100% |
Also needed:
- Confetti soap. If you prefer not to use confetti soap (shredded already made soap), just adjust your soap recipe, to maybe 36 oz of oils total.
- Brown soap dough
Custom Additives
| Add with the Fats | ||
|---|---|---|
| Rosemary oleoresin (you will need jewelers scale or small precision scale) | 0.02 oz | 0.46 g |
| Add at trace | ||
| EDTA solution (mixed 50/50 with distilled water) | 0.44 oz | 13 g |
For more information on these additives you can click in the links below, please note above links are affiliate ones
- Rosemary oleresin (My oils already had this added when I masterbatched the oils)
- Tetrasodium EDTA
Colorants:
- White: 1/2 tsp of Titanium Dioxide from Nurture Soap (or anywhere else you can get it), dilute it in a little bit of distilled water
- 1/2 tsp Orange oxides plus 1/4 tsp chocolate brown mica from Wholesale Supplies Plus for the brown
- Snowflake Sparkle mica for the top.
Fragrance:
- 1 oz of Gingerbread Fragrance from Lone Star Candle for half of the soap with 1 oz of Vanilla stabilizer
- 0.75 oz of either Cinnamon Supreme or Spice Fragrance Formulator for the top. (half of the soap, you will have leftovers)
**Note: this is what I used because I already had these fragrances; however, their usage rate in soap has drastically gone down because of the latest IFRA 49/50 recommendations. I would suggest to look for a fragrance that is soap safe at 5% at least and does not discolor and goes well with the gingerbread scent.
You may wonder why I chose to color the main soap brown and used a vanilla stabilizer; instead of letting the fragrance discolor to brown. The reason is that sometimes when a fragrance discolors, it does not discolor evenly, like in this soap, where it got darker around the embeds, and I wanted an even brown color with the soap confetti scraps.
Sample of uneven discoloration with embeds:
Molds:
Embeds
To make the door embeds I used:
- Dark brown soap dough.
- door extruder disc and
- an extruder
Make the door ahead and place it on the bottom center of the mold, trying to stick it in place.
Equipment
Safety Equipment:
- Nitrile gloves
- Facial Shield (I use either a facial shield or the goggles below)
- Safety Goggles
- Respirator (I use this when mixing the lye, I mix the lye in the window sill, window opened, with a pedestal fan blowing the fumes away, better yet, freeze your distilled water prior) I also try to wear long sleeves, pants and closed shoes. In my personal experience, most of my near misses (when I feel my skin itching or a slight burning sensation), or when I come contact with the soap batter, have happened when I am wiping down the containers, when I am almost done.
Process
- Firs, it is a good idea to mixed the micas with olive oil or any clear oil, and measure the fragrances. I use Long and skinny spatulas to do this.
- I also chopped some leftover soap scraps for confetti effect.
- To make the soap, I normally heat up some of my masterbatched oils, weigh what I need and set it apart.
- Then I measure the masterbatched lye needed. However, if you do not masterbatch the oils or lye, I detail it below:
- In a well ventilated area (outside or by a window), add the lye gradually to the distilled water. Do not breathe the fumes. You can freeze half of the water ahead to avoid fumes, and weigh the ice cubes. You need to wear your safety gear. Lye burns! You can prepare this several hours ahead, or even days ahead, keep it properly covered. (If making it the same day, loosely cover it to allow it to cool down. Once at room temperature, use an airtight lid).
- While you wait for the lye water to cool down, you can weigh and melt your oils. Weigh your fragrance oil or essential oils into a glass container or ceramic container (fragrance oils can dissolve thin plastics).
- When your oils and lye solution are at or below 105°F (37.77°C), put on your PPE (Personal protective equipment) again, and add your lye solution to the oils slowly, to avoid splatters pour it on the blender shaft. If your lye solution is cooler than this, is ok. As long as it not near freezing. (Room temperature is fine). If your oils go under 95° F, warm them up to lightly above 100° F
- Stir with the blender on Off position initially, then blend for 5-7 second periods, alternating with stirring for 10 seconds or longer, until it is emulsified. This takes about 30-50 seconds with this recipe. When a recipe reaches emulsion, everything has a uniform, lighter color than before, you do not see the darker oil swirls when blending.
- Divide the soap batter in half
- Color one half with titanium dioxide, blend it and set apart, do not add fragrance yet
- Color the other half with the brown and orange micas/oxides, blend and add the confetti soap (if using)
- Add the fragrance to the soap and stir for about 30 seconds. Add the vanilla stabilizer as well. Add the confetti scraps, if using.
- Pour into mold (Which should have the door embed in it already, per above)
- Once the soap is somewhat set, try to shape the top in a rough triangular shape and scrape it with the straight line roof scraper..
- Repeat until you are happy with the result, filling in any empty spots
- Go back to your white soap half and add the fragrance and blend it
- By the time you are done mixing the white fragrance in, the brown soap should have set well enough to allow you to add the white part, which will also get thick fairly quickly.
- Scrape the white portion with the scalloped scraper, repeat until you are somewhat happy with it.
- Sprinkle with the Snowflake mica, you can apply with a brush, a fine mesh colander or glitter diffuser.
- Wait 12-18 hours hours to remove, then cut to desired thickness
- Let the soap cure for at least 4 weeks in an open area protected from direct sunlight before using. (not touching any metal)
Some concepts explained:
*SUPERFAT:
By now you probably know that lye (sodium hydroxide) converts oils into soap, through a process called saponification. And you probably also know that there are specific amounts needed of each for this to happen. Because each soap has a different SAPonification value, different amounts of lye are needed for each oil.
Superfatting sounds like something I like to do to myself when I keep eating after I feel full. But in the soap world, many will know it is when you either add more oils or less lye than it is required. Let’s say, hypothetically, that you need 3 oz of lye to convert 16 oz of manacao oil (totally made up oil) into soap. If you only use 2.5 oz of lye instead of 3, that means that a percentage of the manaco oil will not become soap, but will remain an oil. And this is desirable as that extra oil will cause the soap to become more gentle on your skin, by reducing its cleansing ability slightly. But if you use 4 oz of lye instead of 3, that means all 16 oz of manacao oil will become soap, and not only that, there will be extra lye floating around. That extra lye will be looking for more oil to convert to soap, that oil could be the natural skin oils, which means this soap can burn or irritate the skin.
Usually superfat of at least 3% is recommended as oils properties may change from crop to crop. But even if you had a 0% superfat soap, it would still be gentle as handmade soap creates glycerin, which is a skin humectant. (From most commercially produced soap, glycerin is removed to be sold separately).
*LYE CONCENTRATION / WATER DISCOUNT:
Most soap calculators will give you the amount of water needed to mix the lye with, based on traditional cooking methods of making soap, what we now know as hot process. This is a big percentage of water (38% of the oils) because a lot of it would evaporate through the cooking process. However, for cold process soap this is usually too much water, which can lead to a lot of soda ash or a lot of shrinkage during the cure.
This blogpost explains it better (from modern soapmaking).
Soaps by Glenda 