# palm kernel flakes?



## tomrip (Jan 18, 2016)

hello, i bought everything to make and avocado soap from soap crafting book. i then realized i bought palm oil, but now palm kernel flakes. can i substitute that with lard? the recipe calls for both.


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## cmzaha (Jan 18, 2016)

Lard is a good replacement for Palm Oil. Palm Kernel Flakes or Palm Kernel oil are replacements for Coconut Oil. It is one of the cleansing bubbly oils in soap. Palm and Lard make longer lasting less soluble bars of soap. You need to learn to use a soap calculator, soapcalc.net is popular and not take the numbers right out of the book. For beginners it is really good to start with an 85% lard, 15%c coconut oil. Even 100% lard makes a nice soap


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## IrishLass (Jan 18, 2016)

Hi Tom- if you don't have the palm kernel flakes, you can use coconut oil instead (they are both cleansing, bubbly oils with similar properties), but make sure to run it through a lye calculator to get the correct amount of lye. 

Lard is not a good sub for palm kernel flakes, but it is a fairly good sub for palm oil. 

For what it's worth, palm oil and palm kernel oil/flakes are very different oils that produce very different soaps. Palm oil will make a hard bar with practically little lather, while palm kernel oil/flakes will make a hard cleansing bar with lots of lather.

Edited to add- Carolyn beat me to it! lol


IrishLass


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## tomrip (Jan 18, 2016)

Thanks for the reply. Quick question, the recipie also calls for coconut  oil. So do i just add more coconut oil. Im trying to use the xalc, but this recipie uses avacado slurrue, and i dont see how to add fragrence. Or the purpise just fir the base ingredient


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## cmzaha (Jan 18, 2016)

If the recipe is calling for avocado puree it is counted as your water amount and deducted from the total liquid. Not sure what you were trying to spell in your last post. In my opinion you are just not ready to play with anything other than water for liquid. You cannot just substitute one oil for another, without running the numbers through a soap calculator such as soapcalc.net. Every box on soapcalc has a pop up box explaining how to use it. Water is best to use at the default of 38% until you learn what you are doing and the 5% superfat leaves a good margin for error.


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## IrishLass (Jan 18, 2016)

Hi Tom- I'm not familiar with xcalc, or was that a typo? I use this online calculator myself, which also lets you add in your amount of fragrance oil in the upper right corner: http://soapcalc.net/calc/SoapCalcWP.asp

Anyway- yes you can add the entirety of the palm kernel flakes amount to the coconut oil amount, but you will have to type your entire newly tweaked recipe into the calculator in order to get the proper lye amount for your batch (the lye amount will be different because you are subbing all the PKF amount to the coconut amount). 


Edited to add- Carolyn beat me to it again! lol

IrishLass


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