I have never made soap before so I am looking forward to your tutorial. You are so talented and I love CITR

will be here tomorrow :)  This thread was a GREAT idea!  Thanks Suzanne

Suzanne McMinn said:

Amerayl, I'd love to try cream soap sometime. If you have a recipe that works, let us know about it!

I've yet to perfect a recipe on my own, but here is one recipe that I do like a lot. http://www.soap-making-essenti…..cream.html

The Yahoo Cream Soap group has some really great recipes as well, if you join.

Rhassoul Cream Soap

Oil Phase

9oz Stearic Acid

3 oz Coconut Oil

2.5 oz Olive Oil

1 oz Castor Oil

.5 oz Shea Butter

4.8 oz Glycerin

Water Phase

20 oz Distilled Water

.39 oz NaOH (11 grams)

2.55 oz KOH (72 grams)

Supercream

.5 oz Stearic Acid

.5 oz Glycerin

Additives

0.2 oz Rhassoul Clay

0.2 oz Allantoin

1 oz Distilled Water

I’m going
use my own instructions since Cathy’s were kinda confusing to me even if I’ve
made cream soap before. Cream Soap is a little more difficult because of the 2 lyes.

I measured the
stearic acid, coconut oil, castor and olive oils together and melted in a
microwave. Stearic acid has a very high melting point, so you should be
careful. But I found that melting it with the other oils, stearic acid melted
faster and with less heat than just by itself. It is important not to overheat
the oils or you might cause a fire in your microwave.  The best heating solution is to use a double
boiler, but I’m not too smart at times. After that is melted, add the Shea
Butter and glycerin. (Learned the hard way that glycerin is water based and
thus not to nuke it with the other oils). Keep warm. I’ve got this batch in a
bowl for now since it is so small. You could just add everything to your
crockpot and let it melt the oils on low.

Measure the
water, I use my “Lye Only” pitcher. Hint, measure the KOH first, then the NaOH
on top of the KOH. The small amount of NaOH likes to cling to the container.
Drop the lyes into the water (Never, Never do it the other way around, then you’ll
discover why lyes are used to unclog pipes). When clear and no lumps, add to
oils. Like with liquid soap, stick blend for a few then just stir to keep your
hand blender from overheating and die a horrible death. Because the two lyes
are different chemically and thus saponifies at different rates, getting to
trace is a bit difficult and stearic acid doesn’t want to initially convert.

Once it is
thick, I pop it into the crock and put a lid on it. Cook it on low or keep
warm. I checked up on it every so often, bout 15 – 20 min intervals. Stir,
chunk it, but put away your stick blender because you’ll kill it. It will go
through several stages, Lumpy, Taffy, Stiff Taffy, Creamy Mashed Potatoes,
Stiff Mashed Potatoes. Just try to chunk it up when it gets thick. Cook until Translucent
about 3 to 4 hours.  If you don’t have
Phenolphthalein , don’t worry, cook it another 30 minutes or hour. It should
look like the “Candy” phase of Liquid Soap. Candy, meaning that it looks like a
Jolly Rancher candy. Otherwise, test a small smear of soap on a paper plate or
towel. **Never add Phenolphthalein to your soap mass, it is a carcinogen ** I
thought I needed this, but mostly I find I don’t use it cause I just keep the
soap in the crock a little longer.

Heat up your
supercream ingredients, double boiler method. Believe me, you don’t want that
mess in the microwave. Add to soap and mix in as well as you can. You will
probably need a stainless steel spoon for this. Cook another 15-20 minutes.
Then turn off the crock pot and leave the soap in there overnight.

Usually, I
found that the more it cooked, the more stiff cream soap becomes, then it
relaxes after it being cooled. This batch for me was very loose at the end of
the cook, then stiffened up quite a bit. It might be the stearic acid (I
had  a new pail) or just the nature of
this soap recipe. After the soap is cooled, you’ll notice it has become opaque.
 This is when I add the additives,
because my allantoin is very heat sensitive. I had to get my clean gloves and
mush it into the soap mass. Put the soap mass into a bowl and cover with
plastic wrap. Put it somewhere safe to rest or “rot”. Resist the urge to add
more water. Really, Really resist the urge to add more water.

Wait 1 week,
stir or chunk, wrap and put away. Resist the urge to add more water. Wait
another week, stir and then determine if you want to add more water, hydrosol,
aloe juice etc. For me in my High Desert home, this batch turned out to loosing
up to a body butter consistency. Which would be nice to put into tubs and make
a nice sugar scrub, but I wanted body wash thickness, so I added about 6 oz of
water, but usually, you would only go about an oz at a time and wait some more.
The frustrating and wonderful thing about cream soap is that it really does get
better as it ages. You could use it now, but in a month or two? Even better.

You don’t
have to use additives, but some really nice ones are silk powder, oat protein,
wheat protein, clays, allantoin, panthenol. You will notice I didn’t use Cathy’s
additives, I didn’t have them  so I used
what I did have and have liked before in a lotion.

Sorry for the long post.The stearic acid makes it look so pearly.

Your Very Welcome, I hope that it works out as good for you as it did for me. I use this mostly as a bodywash or shaving soap, but it would make a good shampoo. I never thought of that. For shampoo, I would definitely add panthenol and silk (liquid or powdered). Quick tip, if you have a 100% silk shirt that you don't mind cutting up, add a 1" square to the lye water.

I got my Rhassoul Clay from Camden Grey and my allantoin from MMS. I'm sure they can be found at other places as well.

I recently bought Failor's booklet on Cream Soap and hope to soon develop my own really cool recipes. I finally found it at Brambleberry.