Mild Liquid Soap Recipe

This is a lovely, moisturizing liquid soap recipe that balances the cleaning power of coconut oil with the moisturizing of sunflower. It will still lather well, and should be crystal clear once it's diluted.

This is the recipe I use for my Basic Liquid Soap except in this recipe, I use the lye calculator (and neutralization methods) from Summer Bee Meadow instead of the Catharine Failor method of figuring in a lye excess.

• 16.5 oz. sunflower oil
• 7 oz. coconut oil
• 5.2 oz. potassium hydroxide
• 15.8 oz. distilled water for the lye-water solution
• .3 oz. fragrance or essential oil - per 8 oz. of soap paste - more or less to preference
• 4 tbs. of a 5% borax solution - per 8 oz. of soap paste - to neutralize
• 7-8 oz. distilled water - per 8 oz. of soap paste for dilution

Following the basic instructions in

1. Measure out and melt your oils
2. Make your lye solution
3. Mix the oils and lye together
4. Bring the mix to trace
5. Cook the paste using either the traditional crock pot method, or the oven process method - I cooked this recipe about 4.5 hours
6. Test for done-ness - because of the cloudiness of the jojoba oil, this is a hard recipe to test for done-ness. I always just cook it a little longer to make sure it's all done saponifying.
7. Neutralize the soap
8. Add your fragrance and/or color
9. Let the soap rest/sequester

For this recipe, I neutralized it a bit differently than in the traditional liquid soap making process. I used a 5% borax solution made of:

• .5 oz. borax
• 9.5 oz. almost boiling water

To neutralize this soap, I used 4 tbs. of the 5% borax solution per 8 oz. of soap paste.

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