Soap Making Day at the Gaia Finca

How to make a soap the Gaia way

                   What is elegance? Soap and water!
-Cecil Beaton

Taking to the soap making area, putting on some nice music and producing a batch of soaps is always a pleasure at the Gaia Finca. There is no pleasure like that of mixing and blending and making…. then standing back and looking at what you have produced. I always say it is just like cooking …. except it doesn't make you put on weight!

You can make soap from pretty much any oil but use at least 1/3 of a highly saturated oil so that your soap lathers well. Once you have chosen your oils use a lye calculator to calculate the correct amount of sodium hydroxide *for your lye solution* and water to use to make your soap. www.brambleberry.com have a really useful one, even available as an Ap.
http://www.brambleberry.com/pages/Lye-Calculator.aspx
For small batches kitchen silicone moulds are really pretty, easy and useful to use as your soap moulds!
Please remember to always be safe, wear, protective gloves, goggles and an apron!

Assemble your moulds

Assemble your ingredients, here we are adding
salt and oats as gentle exfoliants and skin softeners

All the things you wish to add to your soap mix.
Like liquidized Aloe Vera and Calendula Petals

Essential Oils to scent your soap and VERY IMPORTANT
protective glasses and gloves

Melt down your solid fats, in this case
chocolate and coconut oil

Prepare your decorative final touches in this case
olive tree leaves

Last check is everything ready to start

Heating the oils, in this case coconut, olive & sunflower oil

Temperatures are VERY important! At Gaia we heat our
oils to 32 degrees

Heating the Lye solution to the same
temperature as the oils

Stir it all together and blend at first fast and then slowly
to incorporate all the the oils and lye solution
encouraging the temperature to rise slightly

In a separate vessel prepare the things you are going to add
to the soap mix. At Gaia we use flower
 petals, oats, essential oils
and salt

Blend evenly until you have custard like blend that shows a
trace in the stirred liquid!

Your soap mix is ready and you can now add it to the
 prepared essential oils and flowers and exfoliants

Pour it into the moulds 

…and decorate the soaps with your leaves. Leave it in a
warm place for 24 hours. Sometimes in the winter
when our soaps are slow to turn hard we put some hot water
bottles on them ! But cover them first or stack the moulds.

AFter 24 hours the soaps are turned out of the
moulds and are ready to cut

The soaps are cut to the required sizes 

….and to client specifications. These are for a client with
a Boutique Hotel in Menorca

* My two top tips to my soap making helper *
1. Whenever you think you have stirred enough stir it some more!
 2. Wear some really nice cloth to make soap! You will work more
carefully and this saves on the clearing up process later!