This month’s Soap Challenge Club involved incorporating food and drink into our soap recipe. Our soaps could be entered into either the regular category (partial liquid replaced with a drink, some food used in the recipe) or the advanced category (100% of the liquid replaced with a drink, use 1 part food per 8 parts base oil, and use natural colorants, etc). I decided to try the advanced category and see what I could come up with.  :)

I wanted to have a theme for this soap so that my food and drink had some sort of purpose. I decided to go with one of my favorite smoothie recipes – mango banana. For the drink portion, I used coconut milk and aloe vera juice. In my usual mango banana smoothie, I always add orange juice in with the coconut milk, but I decided to just let the orange essential oil be the orangy part of this recipe.

I also added mint essential oil, because orange and peppermint are one of my favorite blends. I would never put mint in a smoothie, though. Love the scent, do not appreciate the taste whatsoever.

Based on the mango banana smoothie idea, here are the foods and drinks I decided to use:

• Mango, Apple, & Avocado baby food
• Banana baby food
• Coconut Milk (unsweetened)
• Aloe Vera Juice

RECIPE
Olive Oil – 40%
Coconut Oil – 25%
Shea Butter – 15%
Castor Oil – 6%
Sunflower Oil – 5%
Cocoa Butter – 5%
Avocado Oil – 4%

Superfat – 5%
Liquid = 1.8 x sodium hydroxide (36% lye solution)

For my liquid, I used 50% coconut milk and 50% aloe vera juice to make up the entire 255 grams I needed. After measuring them out, I froze the liquids in an ice tray overnight.

      

Here’s how I calculated the food required for my recipe:

Base oil recipe weight – 1024 grams

Food requirement (1 part food per 8 parts base oils):  1024g / 8 = 128 grams food

After blending the oils and lye a bit, I added all 128 grams of baby food to the entire batch and continued to blend a bit more before splitting the batch to add color and fragrance.

     

I divided the batch into 4 parts, adding different colors and essential oils to each part:

• 55% plain white soap (well, baby food brown, actually)
  • kaolin clay (didn’t really help the brown)
  • peppermint essential oil
• 20% orange soap
  • paprika infused sunflower oil – 1 tsp per cup of soap
  • illite clay – 1 tsp (hydrated) per cup of soap
  • orange essential oil
• 20% dark blue soap
  • indigo root mixed with sunflower oil – 1/2 tsp per cup of soap
  • activated charcoal mixed with sunflower oil – 1/2 tsp per cup of soap
  • tangerine essential oil
• 5% blue green soap
  • 1 tsp woad oil per cup of soap

    

I decided to do an in-the-pot swirl in my tall and skinny mold since that seemed to go with the whole smoothie theme. The pour went pretty well except for me glancing to check the camera while I was pouring. One should never glance away while pouring soap into a mold. I only lost about 1/4 cup of soap and sacrificed a dish towel to forever be indigo blue, but other than that, I was pleased with how the soap behaved.

In the finished soap, the dark indigo blue turned a forest green on me. Thankfully! I don’t know why I was going for an orange and blue soap anyway (except I’m kind of partial to those colors). I actually think the green looks much better with the tan and burnt orange and definitely makes more sense with my overall theme. I guess that would be the only time I’ve ever been glad my indigo blue turned green (has happened a LOT over the years). ;)

Here are some final photos after cleaning up the edges with a vegetable peeler and steaming:

Thank you so much for reading my post!