Making soap (and a cake)

I suppose I wasn't really surprised that my lovely T said no to me using our good bathroom soap for the dishes! I bought some really cheap ingredients from the supermarket and thought I would have a go at making soap cheaper than washing up liquid.

The ingredients are:
Solid fat 200g  I used lard at just under a euro for 250g
Liquid fat 300g   I bought a bottle of sunflower oil at 1.30euros
Lye   70g   A very large box of borax is 9 euros. I had some from England in the cupboard and used that.
Distilled water  190g  less than a euro for 5 litres. Distilled water is best as minerals in different types of water can affect the finished soap.

Gather your utensils together. A glass jug for mixing the lye. Always add lye to water, not the other way round as it may splash and it can burn! A plastic pot for weighing the lye, scales a pot or mixing bowl and something to pour your soap into. I use washed out cartons.

Gently melt the fats in a pot. It's a good idea to turn the heat off just before the solid fat has melted as sometimes it takes too long to cool to the right temperature. You want the lye solution at around 100f and the same for the fats. The lye heats itself, so all you have to do is wait for it to cool.

When the fat and lye are at about the same temperature, within 5degrees of 100F, pour the lye into the fat and at this point add any fragrances that you might like, I used tea tree, then mix with a stick blender (above). Usually it takes only a couple of minutes for the soap to reach trace, when you can see the shape of ribbons in the mix.  I think this took much longer to set because I used soft lard and thin oil. I quickly looked up online if this was ok, and was reassured that it was.

I poured the mixture into the carton and waited for it to cool. This also took much longer but after 24hours it was getting firmer.  There are so many good recipes online that I would recommend looking at and doing lots of research before having a go. It's nothing to be frightened of and so long as you wait a couple of weeks for the soap to reach full saponification then it should all be safe. To be sure, I bought a little packet of PH strips to test the alkalinity of my soaps. So far, they've all been perfectly PH neutral :D  Rhonda Jean has some great soap recipes here :D

After all that work, I made a banana and walnut loaf using some of the walnuts I vacuum packed after last years harvest. It was soooo good <3