Lavender and Lemongrass

I tried doing a swirl using alkanet as a coloring, but the soap started getting too thick too fast and I ended up with very inelegant blobs. It was good soap though—lavender infused olive oil and a really healthy amount of lavender fragrance oil (Exotic Fragrances was out of lavender essential oil—can you imagine?). I think the fragrance oil actually accelerated the trace.

So I shredded the blob soap and sandwiched it. It's not as pronounced as I'd like, but still pretty.

That beautiful green is from olive oil infused with lavender and lemongrass—which I have a ton of. It grew very nicely in my plot this summer. I have a feeling I'll be using it a lot.

This lemongrass part was cold process/oven process—or CPOP as it's called on The Dish.  Regular cold process, but then you tuck the soap into the oven to force it to gel.

Most soapers seem to pre-heat their oven to 170 degrees and then turn the oven off when they put the soap in. I don't dare turn my oven on—I haven't since the 20th century. God knows what's in there that could catch on fire or just stink. So I just let the pilot light do the work.

Much easier than regular hot process. I think it looks better too.

Ingredients:

Olive oil pomace infused with lavender and alkanet/lemongrass

Palm kernel oil

Coconut oil

Lard

Castor oil

NYC Tap Water

Fragrance:

Lemongrass, ylang ylang and may chang essential oils
Spanish lemon verbena and lavender fragrance oils

If you like this blog, check out my new one: The Haley Maxwell Soap Making Mysteries