Cucumber Soap

Natural colorants can be marvelous in soap!

For a subtle, light green-beige color in your soap, you can use cucumber - skin, flesh, seeds and all. You can use this recipe with any soap recipe - or create your own soap recipe. Just substitute well-pureed cucumber for the water in your recipe. The cucumbers have so much water in them as it is, you can use up to 100% cucumber in exchange for the water. The skin is what gives the soap its color, so if you want more color to the soap, add in a higher ratio of skin to the liquid. (i.e. two or three cucumbers worth of skin, but just one cucumber worth of insides.)

Here's the recipe that was used for this batch. Be sure to run your recipe through a lye calculator if you change the size or oils.

Recipe

Makes two pounds of soap

• 7.5 oz. olive oil
• 7.5 oz. coconut oil
• 7 oz. palm oil
• 1.5 oz. castor oil
• 1.5 oz. cocoa butter
• 7.5 oz. total liquid (one large cucumber, and the skin off of a second)
• 3.6 oz. lye
• optional 2-3 tbs finely ground cucumber skin - patted very dry with a paper towel after grating - gives little green specks to the soap.

1. Follow the directions in making a lye solution with alternative liquids to make your lye solution with the cucumber.
2. Make your soap recipe using basic soap making instructions.
3. Add in the grated cucumber at trace
4. Pour the soap into your mold, wait overnight, unmold, slice, cure and enjoy!