Heidi’s Liquid Handsoap…easy as pie!

I spent yesterday morning experimenting with making liquid handsoap…yes, I was distracted by the allure of mixing and whipping and pouring and generally making a mess of things, and didn’t complete the editing for my Happy Hexagon Crochet tutorial…so I am sorry dear readers, and will get on that asap in the new week…BUT, I think I have unvented (don’t you just LOVE that word? Thank you EZ!), a very easy, all natural method of making liquid handsoap, without having to use lye and long cooking times… As you all know, I am totally smitten by the cold processed soap that I had learned to make from Rhonda’s lovely blog, and since that, I have only made soap, never bought commercially available soaps again. My kids and husband love it, and Gerry even uses the soap to wash his hair…so all-round a big hit!

I really like liquid soap next to the basin in the kitchen, because it’s so easy to just squeeze out some from a pump dispenser when you want to wash hands, and it stays clean and contained…however, the daunting prospect of making liquid soap in the traditional way with cooking in a crockpot, and watching it, and having to use KOH lye etc led me to trying to make the liquid soap using just my cold processed natural soap that had been “curing” for around 3 months.

I have seen many references on the web to using commercially available soap, grating it up and melting it in water and adding some glycerine to thicken…I went through the whole process of trying this method, but using my cold processed soap instead, and it failed completely! I even tried whipping the liquid with a a hand-held blender and it didn’t thicken at all…
This made me wonder what they put in commercially sold soaps that makes it thicken with just water and a bit of glycerine? I guess it may be the same basic process as making the liquid laundry soap…if anyone knows, let me know what the “thickening ” ingredient is 🙂

After much experimenting and some messed up batches, I have come up with the following process, and it really made the most beautiful, moisturizing liquid soap I have used 🙂

Start by grating your cured cold processed soap. I arbitrarily used 240g of soap as my starting amount.
Pour 2L of water into a large stainless steel pot and place on low to medium heat. Add the grated soap flakes and stir until all the flakes have melted.

The mixture will make some foam, so try not to whisk it, just stir gently …above you can see the clear golden liquid that results.

In a double boiler (or in my case, a Pyrex glass bowl suspended on a steel pot with some boiling water in it), melt the coconut oil and the beeswax pellets. Use low heat…you don’t want it to get super-hot…just hot enough to start melting the beeswax.

Above you can see the melted mix…when I see the beeswax pellets beginning to melt, I turn off the heat. The rest will melt in with some gentle stirring.

Let both mixtures (the soapy water and the beeswax/coconut mix) reach around 60 degrees Centigrade (I am not sure if this is critical…I usually make sure that any mixes are at the same temperature…).

Pour your beeswax/coconut mix into your soapy water, slowing adding all of it while blending with a handheld blender (I used the high speed setting on my stick blender). It won’t thicken, just mix all of the ingredients very well…

You will now have a milky coloured watery liquid. I poured it into a large glass bowl and put it in the fridge to cool. Over the next couple of hours, I checked in on it and found that the mixture separated out into a clear golden liquid at the bottom, and a white layer on the top.

I gently mixed it back into an all milky colored liquid using a hand whisk. Next time I checked, there was less of a separation, and I again gently swirled the lot with a whisk. I mixed twice in about two hours then left it in the fridge.

When I got up this morning, I found that it had gelled into the most wonderful, thick milky liquid! It is really lovely stuff…it didn’t leave my hands dry as I think the coconut oil is probably adding a moisturizing element…

I decanted the liquid soap into a pump dispenser and it works well…no clogging or blocking up…

Please try this out and let me know if it works out well for you?

Next week, the promised Happy Hexagon Tutorial!
Have a lovely Sunday folks 🙂

♥Heidi