We woke up to a light dusting of snow on the ground and continued light flurries throughout the morning. It’s starting to feel like winter!

Today was soap day. I started making soap a few years ago, and we’ve been using my homemade soap exclusively for more than 2 years. We’ve had two moves since my last batch, so today was more of a refresher course for me. I pulled out my last recipe and went with that for this batch. I don’t think I’ve repeated a recipe before, always making small (and sometimes major) tweaks. This recipe calls for cocoa butter, shea butter, coconut oil, sunflower oil and olive oil, with added fragrance of juniper oil.

Soapmaking isn’t a difficult process, but you do need to get the steps in the right order and pay attention to temperatures – all of which I had to look up to make sure I had them right (I did, but felt better checking first). Lye gets added to the water – not the other way around. That gets really hot – and needs good ventilation – so doing that on the back patio took care of ventilation and helped drop the temp quickly. Oils and such get melted in a double boiler, then need to cool. The trick is getting the lye and oil solutions to cool to the same temperature – I shoot for about 115 degrees F. Today I got lucky and didn’t have to fiddle with one or the other.

Next up is mixing the lye solution into the oils with an immersion blender until it thickens, then adding the fragrance. Once it’s all mixed, it goes into the mold to set up for a couple of days. I had a little extra, so that went into some silicone cupcake molds for gifting. In a couple of days I’ll slice into individual bars.