All safety gear goggles are a must, gloves, apron, newspaper ; )

Know ahead of time there will be variability in when you reach the phases and how long your
liquid soap takes to be done. This will depend on the size of your soap pot, your environment,
and your oven.

Recipe
3 oz Apricot kernel oil or Almond oil
5 oz Canola oil
16 oz Coconut Oil
6 oz Sunflower Oil
0.5 oz Castor Oil
___________________________________
7.7 oz potassium hydroxide
8 oz Distilled Water

Dilution water
60 oz distilled water
0.8 oz hydroxycellulose
3.0 oz glycerin

Neutralizer
0.15 oz citric acid
0.5 oz distilled water
________________________________________________________________________
Equipment: SATETY GEAR. GOGGLES ARE A MUST. Gloves, apron, some sort of paper I use a spot of
freezer paper on my cupboard to place the long handled spoon I use to periodically stir with. Stainless
steel stockpot, I think mine holds about might hold about 2 gallons of fluids. A stick blender. Clear small
glasses that can hold heated water...baby food jars are good even shot glasses work. These will be used
for testing soap paste for clarity. A clear pitcher or very large clear glass measuring cup [needs to be
large enough to hold about 64 ounces of distilled water]. A normal size hand whisk - not a high shear
automatic one. Just a hand whisk. Dollar store has them. This will be used to stir slurry and distilled water
in the pitcher.

How to make Liquid soap paste
Using the same large stock pot stainless steel that will go into the
oven, melt your Coconut oil. Do not overheat, melt on low heat. Weigh out loose room temp
oils, and add to the melted Coconut oil in the stock pot. The lowest setting warm. Now weigh out
distilled water, weigh out KoH in separate container, add the Koh to the distilled water and stir
well. Remove the stock pot from the range and immediately & gently stick blend the lye water
into the melted stock pot Now comes patience.. keep stick blending,
on and off, rest the Stick blender so it doesnt overheat. Alternate between stick blending and
periodically just using the SB to stir the soap without being on. This can take a while to get the
results you want. There are several phases the soap will go through. Doing these phases before
the cook speeds up the whole process and can easily be obtained before placing in the oven.
I started at 1:05 pm.. at about 1:24 pm the soap began to show some beginning signs of
thickening and small lumps , keep going. At 1:26 pm I got what
look like a few small curdles with small riverlets of oils; porridge
Within a few minutes of that effect if you keep stickblending the
soap paste will begin to pull together again and turn in to thick gloppy mashed potato
Keep stick blending, now a softer stage seems to appear for a few
seconds, and the emulsion is very nice and smooth. A few seconds after that the Mashed potatoe
effect it seems to soften for just a few minutes and is smooth but becoming thick, and thicker as
you go along. You wont be able to Stick blend any more.
Grab a long handled spoon or spatula, stir periodically.
Notice how the paste takes on a sheen, and seems to melt together ? Heres what you are aiming
for: Look familiar? Think of how Cream soap
looks when it becomes almost too hard to stir, and takes on a translucency when you are
cooking. With LS this happens before you cook. Just let it melt together and become glisteny. I
let it sit in the pan for about 10 minutes with the lid on and let it meld together when I reach this
point. Then place the whole caboodle in my preheated to 260 degree oven. Dont forget the lid.
Now begins the wait ; ) I placed in the oven at about 1:40 pm. Periodically stir.
Keep in mind the stages of cream soap. Some of this will look familiar. Only in this case, we are
going way past glisteny, translucent appearance. You do not need phenopethalien for your liquid
soap. It doesnt matter when neutral, we are going beyond.
We will begin testing the soap-paste differently when you have reached translucency.
[to test, use a small glass heat proof jar, Ive used baby food jars, shot glasses, what have you]. I
boil up about 1.5 cups of distilled water dont use your sink water the chemicals will mar the
results. I keep that water hot. When you see translucent, you add the hot distilled water in a small
jar, and add just a to 1/8 tsp of soap paste, leaving the large pot in the oven. Stir the soap past
in to the boiling water in the small glass it will be cloudy somewhat, and less cloudy the closer
you are to done. Let the sample set for a few minutes. If you cant see clearly through, and its not
clear as water, then keep cooking. Dump the sample in the sink.. periodically, test in the same
way. I cook a little beyond [1/2 hour] getting 2 clear samples of water and paste. Advice to
know, do not use tap water. You will not get a clear reading. Use hot distilled water to test the
clarity of your soap paste while it is cooking. Ok, now a clear water test is obtained at least 3
times, turn oven heat down, and get the dilution water ready.




Dilution Phase

You should have around 2 pounds of soap paste, maybe plus 4 ounces. Weigh out 65 oz of
distilled water in a large clear pitcher or very large clear measuring cup and set aside. I use a
clear picture because I want to know when the slurry I have is clearish.

Now weigh into a small separate container, I use a small coffee cup, 3 oz of Glycerin and
0.8 oz of Hydroxycellulose. Mix this slurry well until smooth. Ok. Add with constant stirring
with a hand whisk the slurry into your pitcher of room temp distilled water. Keep stirring and
dont stop unless it is just for seconds. You have to keep stirring until the mixture is clear. This
can take 15 to 20 minutes. Sometimes longer. You can rest for a few seconds, but be careful once
this clumps you cant smooth it out. You cant use a Stick blender or mechanical means. These
high powered utilities break the bond of the gel. Hand whisk and hand whisk well. When this is
clear, heat up gently on top of the stove. Again hand stir, you arent going to boil this stuff. Just
get it hot.
Mix 0.15 oz citric acid into about 0.5 oz water. Mix this well, add to the gel. Now, add the gel to
the soap paste that is still in the Stainless Steel Stockpot in the oven. The soap paste should still
be hot, not having been removed from the oven. Fold it in, dont mix, or whisk. Gently stiryou
dont want to stir up suds. Also , it may cloud up. Dont worry Its going to be ultra thick at first.
Thats Ok, it will turn more liquidy & will begin to clarify more as you cook. The soap paste
will eventually clump up a bit, just chunk and let it melt. You just want the soap paste to melt
into the gelled water. Turn the oven down to maybe 230 degrees, and let this happen. Have a pan
under neath your soap pot to catch spills or climbs. Ive never had it happen, but Ive heard
others have. It may take 5 hours or longer. Just continue to gently stir and chunk up the soap
paste and there so the paste will continue to melt. Once the fluid is added and every thing begins
to melt down in the heated oven, the soap paste will take on a clearish hard sugar candy look. In
fact, the soap paste at this point has been referred to as candy. Dont
eat it though, just a reference. Break up the hard clearish clumps in to smaller clumps so it will
melt down easier. I know you have read you can stick blend this all together at this point. Please
dont be patient and let this melt down gently. You will be glad you did.
See its clear now, and you can still see the hard lumps. There will be no
need at all to sequester and again, in my opinion using automatic force at this point breaks the
bond of the gelling effect. Once you have mostly liquid gel, you can fish out the undissolved
candy, and place in a bowl. You can make another small batch of Liquid Gel by adding distilled
water and heating together. When you have mostly liquid gel [as in the above picture, although I
did cook a bit more] and a few small clumps have been removed. Pour your Liquid Soap into
your heat proofed containers, and let cool just a bit. Cover with towels or tin foil to keep the top
part from thickening in to a skin. You can divide the batch in to more than one container, to scent
differently. Add your warmed up fragrance while the LS is still warm, and stir well. Cover.
Sometimes certain FOs will cloud but over a few days will clear again. FOs with vanilla will
make the LS darky and sometimes cloudy. Still great LS!!! I was tired so bottled the next
morning.
Here are the Gelled Liquid Soap in containers the very next day.


Here are some tips:

I divided my batch before dilution into two separate stock pots and made one half the clearish
normal regular LS, and the other split is Black African soap with African black cocoa butter
mash added to it. Pictures are shown of both about an hour into the dilution phase melt down.
Notice how the candy is melting down, but you can still see clumps of candy. I just keep
breaking it down with a long handled spoon, and gently stirring. Then walk a way to do
something else.
Heres Black Afican cooking down to gel.

I got a little lazy and havent bottled my black African Gelled LS yet. But here it is in the picture, very thick
and ohhhhhhhhhhhh so emollient.
Nice and thick, unscented. Because thats the way I like this one ; )
Huggs, Bekka