Lemongrass and Basil Tiger Stripe Soap Recipe

I made this soap for a swap over on the soap making forum.

The brief was to use natural colourants to produce a soap, so I chose to use paprika infused olive oil and activated charcoal, with a bit of titanium dioxide (I know some people don't like it but I have no problem using it).  My aim was to pour a tiger stripe swirl, but while I was messing around mixing all the colours in it thickened up too much so it isn't quite as stripey as I would have liked. I am still happy with the way it turned out though.

The basic recipe consists of

Palm Oil 30%
Coconut Oil 20%
Olive Oil 35%
Sunflower Oil 15%
Fragrance 3% Lemongrass and Basil EO

I used 920g of oils for my recipe in soap calc as it fits in my 25x7x7cm silicone log mould.

Total Ingredients

Water 349g
Lye (NaOH) 131g
Palm Oil 276g
Coconut Oil 184g
Olive Oil 322g
Sunflower Oil 138g

In order to use paprika infused olive oil to dye 1/3 of the batter I divided the total recipe into two parts. One part will be made from 1/3 of the total ingredients and one part with the remaining 2/3 of the ingredients.

First prepare your paprika infusion. I put 150g of olive oil in a milk pan with 3tbsp of ground paprika and gently heated it on the stove for 10 minutes stirring occasionally. Then left it to cool and the paprika to settle in the bottom.I then poured the top layer of  oil off leaving the paprika sediment in the bottom. I used the top layer of oil to replace the plain olive oil in 1/3 of the soap batter.

I then prepared two batches of lye solution and two batches of heated oils.

1/3 Batter
Palm Oil 92g
Coconut Oil 61g
Olive Oil (paprika infused) 107g
Sunflower Oil 46g
Lye 43g
Water 116g
Fragrance 14g

2/3 Batter
Palm Oil 184g
Coconut Oil 123g
Olive Oil 215g
Sunflower Oil 92g
Lye 88g
Water 233g
Fragrance 28g

I mixed up the two batches of soap batter as usual with a stick blender until I reached emulsion. I then divided the uncoloured portion of batter into two parts and added 1tsp of activated charcoal to one part and 1/2tsp of titanium dioxide to the other part and mixed thoroughly.

I then alternately poured each colour of batter down the centre of the mould on top of the previous layer to create a tiger swirl. (mine isn't quite a tiger swirl as the batter thickened too much by the end and I had to glop it in instead of pour).

You can see a good demonstration of the method here.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_sRe9_W_8R8

I hope I have given you some inspiration to give the tiger swirl a go and to try colouring with oil infusions. It  really is very easy and gives you really pretty results.

You can see the other soaps in the swap over on the soap making forum here

http://www.soapmakingforum.com/showthread.php?t=52659