Yogurt Soap!

A few months ago I was toying with the idea of adding yogurt to soap. Yogurt is packed with beneficial microbes, cultures and lactic acid, making it great for skin. Yogurt is a fresh ingredient and is difficult to preserve in formulas so you can’t just add it to a lotion, but soaps are self preserving so you can add in all kinds of interesting ingredients such as milk and yogurt!

I had some bulk quantities of shea butter and coconut oil which I wanted to use up, plus I love African oils like baobab, so I hopped over to Soapcalc and made up a recipe for myself using those ingredients.

P.S. Soapcalc is a great tool for creating your own soap recipes, I highly recommend trying it out. You can choose different oils and butters as well as play around with the quantities to get a soap that has specific qualities - it's how I formulate most of my soaps.

Here is a gorgeous yogurt soap recipe, complete with fabulous African oils, nourishing shea butter, pretty pink clay for colour and creaminess and of course, the yogurt for moisturising factor.

Rose Yogurt Soap

101g  lye

150g water

120g greek double cream yogurt, room temperature

400g  refined shea butter

220g  coconut oil

100g  almond oil

5g  castor oil

5g  baobab oil

1T  pink clay

20g fragrance - try  rose or geranium essential oils

Handful of  dried rose petals for decoration

This makes 1.1kg soap so use a  loaf mold!

Variations: you can colour your soap with  mica powders, or use different  essential oils and  dried flowers for a different look and scent.

Before you do anything, please ensure you are wearing the appropriate protective clothing, including gloves and  goggles. Do not let the lye mixture or the finished soap mixture touch your skin or you may get a lye burn. Keep pets and young children away. Work in a well ventilated area.

Measure out all your ingredients. Slowly add the lye into the water and stir until dissolved. Set aside outside or in a well ventilated area to cool (lye in water is an exothermic reaction, meaning it gets hot). While your lye mixture is cooling, melt all your oils and butters, except the baobab and castor oils, together. Let the oil mixture also cool. Once both the lye mixture and the oils mixture have cooled down to around 50℃ (or lower but ideally within 10℃  of each other), blend the yogurt into the lye mixture. Slowly add the lye mixture to the oil mixture and blend with a stick blender until trace is just reached. Combine the pink clay with the baobab and castor oil, stirring so there are no lumps, then add this to the soap batter and blend to incorporate. Add in your essential oils for fragrance. Pour the soap batter into the loaf mold, and decorate the soap by making swirls with the batter and sprinkling rose petals on top. Leave your soap in the mold for 24-36 hours to harden up, then unmold it and slice it. Place the soap bars in a covered box and leave to cure for at least 7-8 weeks.

Enjoy!