Making Chocolate Soap

My mom found a recipe for chocolate soap, so I thought I'd give it a try with a few friends, because, be honest with me ladies, who wouldn't want to bathe in chocolate??? So here it is--chocolate soap:

40 oz olive oil
24 ox coconut oil
1 oz unsweetened baking chocolate
4 TB cocoa powder
8 oz lye
4 cups water

The process is the same for all soaps, this one just happens to be chocolate, so you could also use the plain ol' soap recipe here if you don't like chocolate or want to try a regular soap:

16 oz coconut oil
16 oz olive oil
32 oz lard
24 oz water
9 oz lye

Both of these recipes will fill a 9x13 pan--that's a lot of soap. You can cut them down as desired.

Step 1: measure your water in a glass bowl:Step 2: Put on your protective gear and measure your lye separately. Lye is horribly caustic--get your rubber gloves, apron, and eye protection on! I'm using my postal scale to measure the ounces, and I got my lye online from The Lye Guy.

Step 3: Open a window or take the whole operation outside, and add the lye to the water while stirring. Seriously bad cough hack ick fumes here. Maybe a mask of some sort would be helpful. When you add the lye to the water, the mixture gets really hot. Don't be holding it on your lap!

Step 4: Let the lye water sit and cool down while you melt your oils in a double boiler. Big pot inside a bigger pan with water in the pan and the oils in the pot:

Heat your oils until they all melt. What you are trying to do is get the lye water to cool down to 110 degrees at the same time the oils hit 110 degrees. Not an easy task!

See? I got it too hot, so I had to put cold water and ice in my bottom pan to cool my oils down quick.

Step 5: When the oils and the lye water are both 110 degrees give or take a degree, add the lye water to the oils while stirring with your stir stick (used to mix milkshakes) or spoon if you're real ambitious. DON'T turn the stir stick on yet!

Step 6: When the oils and lye water are combined, do a little pulsing with the button on the stir stick, gradually increasing to holding the button down all the time while stirring the stuff in the pot.

If you use a spoon, just keep mixing. It will take an hour or more to get to the next step. The stir stick gets it done in about 20 minutes.

Step 6: Mix until your soap reaches "trace". This is when it's kind of thick like pudding, and it leaves a "scar" when it's dripped across the top of itself. Like this:

Trace is when you add any extras like essential oils for fragrance, oatmeal, flower petals, etc. We just added the cocoa powder. You could add some orange essential oil here and have Pim's soap, or peppermint EO and have peppermint patty soap. Might try one of those next time :) Mix it all in.

Step 7: Line your pan or molds with wax paper, parchment paper, or a light coating of spray oil to help the soap get out when it's time to come out. I've also been told if you use a flexible mold, you can put your soap in the freezer and it will pop out of the mold easier. We're sharing this batch of soap, so everybody brought a bread pan to put her portion of the soap in.

Step 8: Pour the soap into the molds, then wrap in a towel to keep it warm and let it sit for 24-48 hours.

The regular soap was hard enough to come out in 24 hours, but this chocolate one was still pretty soft since it had a higher proportion of liquid oil to start with, so I let it sit about 48 hours before taking it out. Strange thing, as this soap hardened it turned from a milk chocolate color to a dark chocolate color. Still looks yummy :)

Step 9: Cut the soap into useable size pieces, then put it somewhere where you won't be bugging it every day and let it cure for 4-6 weeks. The regular soap we made was ready in 4 weeks, this one might take longer since it's so soft still. Don't leave it sitting on your table or anywhere that's high traffic in your house, or your son might come take a taste (just a little lick, mom) and realize it's not really chocolate after all. :-)

Delicious!