This One's for You, Mom

As folks say here in Tennessee, "Bless her heart."  My mom is deathly allergic to coconut anything.  This has posed a particular challenge for me when making soap because coconut oil makes such great soap.  I spent last week doing some soap research to figure out how to make a great bar of soap minus the coconut.  I created my own recipe using extra palm oil, soybean oil, and castor oil to replace my usual coconut oil. 

While I was in the experimenting mood, I decided to try to add some color to my soap.  Well, to make sure my new recipe worked, I first made the batch without color.  I left some small bars colorless, and proceeded to rebatch the remaining soap, milling it down, melting it, and then adding pigment.

I'm still waiting to see how these bars turn out, as milled soap takes longer to process than straight cold process soap.  The colorless bars seem to be doing well, and the milled bars will contain the same wonderful oils as the colorless bars, just with an added touch of color. 

The key ingredient in this soap is avocado oil.  My mom specifically requested avocado oil, and there's a nice bit of it in this soap.  Here's a picture of the milled soap in one of the molds:

As I said, it will take a bit longer to harden and process.  I hope my experimentation works out.  I would love to give my mom a lovely pink, floral scented (Roship and Jasmine fragrance oil) bar of soap.