“Dad, are you going crazy?”

That was the major question on my older son’s mind as he walked in on me, sitting at the table, mad scientist style, preparing my luscious and intoxicating peppermint vanilla soap. As the great Tupac Shakur said in Juice, “I am crazy. And you know what else? I don’t give a fuck.”

Many of you already know that I devoted my Saturday to making my first real batch after faltering with simply mixing ingredients together. If you’d like to get totally caught up, read this, then this, then rejoin us.

Now that you’re well aware of how we arrived in the twilight zone, we can get crackin’.

You’ll need the following ingredients:

You’ll need the following tools:

• Parchment or brown bag paper
• A bread pan, muffin molds or soap molds
• Long sleeve shirt, safety goggles, and rubber gloves
• Hand blender
• 1 rubber and 1 wood spatula
• Thermometer
• Digital kitchen scale
• 2 glass measuring cups
• 2 glass bowls
• A cleaning bowl or sink for cleaning products contacted by lye
• Crockpot
• pH test strips

Instructions:

1. Weigh your ingredients, set them aside, and turn on your crockpot to low.
2. Perform this step outside. Add water to a glass bowl. While wearing your protective gear and taking care not to breathe the vapors, slowly add the lye to the water while mixing gently with wooden spoon or spatula. The order is important here. Be sure the lye is going into the water rather than the other way around. The mixture and the bowl will get hot, just be aware of that. As you’re stirring, the liquid will go from cloudy to clear. Once it does, set it aside for 5-10 minutes to cool. You can manage step 3 in the meantime.
3. Dump coconut oil into a large saucepan and heat to roughly 125 degrees F. Do not allow the thermometer to touch the bottom of the pot when taking your reading.
4. Pour coconut oil in your crockpot.
5. Carefully add the water-lye mixture to crockpot, stir a bit.
6. Mix with hand blender until you get a pudding like consistency or “trace”. This may take 5-10 minutes. I used a combo of low and high speeds to reach this stage.
7. Cook on low for roughly 45-50 minutes. Look for a lack of oil puddles. It will feel very slightly wet/waxy to the touch, but if it’s super wet, let it cook a bit more. Check on your mix frequently. Dip your pH test strip and wait several minutes for it to fully change color. It should be between 7-10. If it is higher than 10, it’s not quite ready. It will look a bit like Vaseline upon full readiness.
8. Allow your mix to cool for 7 minutes, then add your essential oils. Mix a few times to spread the goodness around.
9. Line your molds with parchment paper.
10. With your rubber spatula, smooth the mix into your mold. The smoother you get the top, the cleaner your bars will look.
11. Cut as soon as fully cool.
12. Set bars on a rack/tray. Allow them to dry out and harden for another few days.

I used my first bar day one, and it was pretty luscious, but the longer you wait, the more likely it is that these bad boys will have all of their conditioning properties come together. Like a fine wine….

Once you’ve made a few batches, tested a few different oils and found your perfect mix, call me. I’ll be your agent and we can start distribution. 5 years from now, our soap empire will be Daymond John-like. I’ve already constructed an email to Shark Tank.

Be clean,

Kap

Original recipe and instructions shared by mommypotamus.com and this is in fine print because I’m hoping you don’t notice that I ever visited a website called mommypotamus.com