Cocoa Butter

[KiwiMoose]

Searching for the perfect recipe....

I don’t use Palm or animal fats, and have been mucking around with some numbers to find a better fatty acid profile.

I have been using coconut and Shea so far, but I think I might ditch the Shea in favour of cocoa butter as it has a better profile to fill the gaps I’m missing with the lack of palm/animal.

Is 25% cocoa butter too much within a recipe? Has anybody used this much? It means I can lower my coconut to 15% which I think will be an improvement.

Your thoughts?

 

[Cellador]

What other ingredients are you using? What specific qualities are you trying to change? If hardness is what you are after, the high CB will help, but butters will reduce your lather. So, you may want to keep the coconut oil at a higher percentage.

My first soap was coconut oil(28%) , cocoa butter (10%), shea butter(7%), and olive oil(55%). I felt like it took a long time to cure but once it did, it was a pretty nice soap.

 

[Dean]

It only has a hardness factor of 27. You can go much higher if u want.

I made cocoa butter soap once and thought it stunk. Might want to consider refined to reduce the scent and unsaponfiables which r reported to reduce lather.

Butters are an expensive palm replacement and cocoa is more expensive than shea. Have u considered soy wax?

 

[KiwiMoose]

I’m scared of the soy wax Dean. Will run some profiles again and see how it stacks up.
I’m also using olive, castor and apricot kernel.

 

[Dean]

I’m scared of the soy wax Dean. Will run some profiles again and see how it stacks up.
I’m also using olive, castor and apricot kernel.

I saw that we previously discussed this. Basically SW is shortening on steroids. I would prefer a more natural palm alternative too. Cocoa butter is it but very expensive relatively. Pluse u have to use al lot more of cocoa than SW...40 to 65%. I consider soy wax the best econ alternative to palm available. There is another alternative...stearic acid. I havnt use it and its not natural either. Let us kno what u decide.

 

[KiwiMoose]

I'll run it through the soap calc Dean and see which comes out tops. Then I'll compare prices of both. Will feed back. This is what I'm currently looking at:

Apricot Kernel: 20%
Babassu: 10%
Cocoa Butter 25%
Coconut 15%
Castor 10%
Olive 20%

This profile is:
Hardness 40
Cleansing 17
Conditioning 57
Bubbly 26
Creamy 32

If I make this - it will be the hardest soap I've made yet.

 

[SaltedFig]

I am very fond of cocoa butter in high olive recipes. Unfortunately soy wax is off my list, I choose not to support the round-up ready gene in commercial soy, so I don't even get to the part where I consider the hydrogenation (when everyone was using margarine, butter was cheap and I was very happy ... unfortunately the natural fats are back on the table and the price has gone back up again).

Which brings up an important issue with cocoa butter. It is fairly profitable and easy enough to mimic. Expect that your source is going to be important. If you get a stinky smell (a bit like sulphur, or an unpleasant "something" that you notice), it is likely that you have adulterated fats (hydrogenated and coloured to be a cocoa butter alternative - there are legitimate (registered) substitutes used in cooking on the market, but the yellow colour gives off a rotten smell during saponification, and once you smell that, you won't forget it). Even a "boost" of colour, or a little substitution, will be noticed if you soap with one of these.

Real cocoa butter and olive soap smells divine and sets up very hard - I like it quite a bit (the winnie the pooh soap I made was over 35% cocoa). I'm planning on trying a cocoa honey soap recipe soon, just to see what it's like .

 

[KiwiMoose]

Thanks Salty, that's more the news I'm wanting to hear. The cocoa butter I can get here doesn't seem too over priced compared to coconut oil and shea butter. The supplier I use has cocoa butter in three types:

Refined: $NZ16 per pound (500g) or $18 if I buy it in chips
Deodorised Organic $NZ19 (500g)
Unrefined organic $NZ35 (500g) or $27 in chips - not sure why the chips are cheaper here

All them have good reviews and no complaints about odour - although all do comment that it is a 'lovely' chocolately smell. I wonder if this would mean it's not suitable for different scents I wish to add - if it would overtake them?

 

[SaltedFig]

(Chips of anything natural can be cheaper because they can be blends, or bits of multiple batches, instead of a single run.)

The chocolate smell is initially strong (and lovely), but it does fade quite dramatically. But perhaps not completely ... the "creature" soap I made had a bit of cocoa as well, and I have a bar sitting next to me from that batch, and it still has just the very faintest chocolate smell to me (but then I can smell olives in 2 year old castille, so that mightn't mean that much ).

To my mind, chocolate mellows to a warm background hint of a scent, so I personally think that even a high amount of raw cocoa butter will not be the main "scent" player in a few months, especially if your added fragrance/essential oil lasts the the cure. Certified organic in NZ is likely to be real cocoa butter (your certification is pretty strong, from memory).

Oh my! I just looked at your pricing! That is a lot higher than here. It might be worth going on a cocoa butter hunt!

(Bulk organics supplier, just in case you can team up with some fellow Kiwi's: https://www.ceres.co.nz/ingredients/baking-ingredients/cacao-butter-raw/
<- this product doesn't show up by searching their online shop)

 

[KiwiMoose]

Thanks Salty - we can get Ceres cacao butter here at the supermarket, maybe I should check their prices?

 

[SaltedFig]

Don't know, but it has to be worth a look - I can't see what would cause the difference in our prices, so there's got to be a cheaper source. Supermarkets and natural food shops gouge on cocoa butter tho ... maybe try a spice shop or a bulk wholefood store? ( it could also be a time-of-year price gouge )

 

[KiwiMoose]

Some totally yummy 'raw' recipes on that website Salty!

Prices $NZ16 = $AU15 = $US11

You reckon that is expensive? That's almost what a litre of coconut oil costs. I worked out that each bar of my soap costs me circa $2.70 to make, give or take a few cents depending on what essential oils I use. So if I ever start selling them they would sell for $6 each, which people will happily pay here for a nice bar of handmade soap. The soap I usually buy from LUSH costs me about $17!

 

[Loralei]

@KiwiMoose , what if you trimmed your CB, increased your Babassu? If you're worried about being too brittle, could you sub in some avocado oil? Noting that I just woke up, and haven't run this suggestion through a calculator yet - it's straight from my pre coffee morning brain, lol!

 

[Loralei]

@KiwiMoose Like maybe this??

 

[cmzaha]

Some totally yummy 'raw' recipes on that website Salty!

Prices $NZ16 = $AU15 = $US11

You reckon that is expensive? That's almost what a litre of coconut oil costs. I worked out that each bar of my soap costs me circa $2.70 to make, give or take a few cents depending on what essential oils I use. So if I ever start selling them they would sell for $6 each, which people will happily pay here for a nice bar of handmade soap. The soap I usually buy from LUSH costs me about $17!

By the time you label, package, figure in coloring, cost of utilities to make the soap, your time, gas to get to markets, online presence (if you are going to sell online), and booth space you have a bar costing considerable more than your estimate. Just cost of ingredients does not go into the cost of making and selling soap. Have you considered vegetable shortening, it works similar to palm. (please keep in mind families feed their children and themselves because of palm industry). I am not trying to start any arguments about using palm and do not know your reason of not using it. Remember soap is a rinse off item that is on the skin for a few seconds.

Soy Wax works very well in soap but stearic acid reacts immediately with the lye, and will cause acceleration depending on the percentage you use. If using stearic acid you will have to soap warmer to make sure the stearic acid stays melted. As much as I like the hardness Coco butter gives to my soap, at 10% it is just to expensive to use, even purchasing in bulk, since I do sell and sell to make money not just break even. I cannot answer the question of 25% being to brittle because mine are used in conjunction with either tallow/lard or my vegan palm recipe and at 10% I have to cut within a few hrs.

 

[penelopejane]

Kiwi coconut oil here is $35 for 5 litres.
babassu oil here is phenomenally expensive.
I try and aim for $1 AUD for a bar of soap for ingredients only but some FOs and EOs are more $$
Are you buying ingredients from soap wholesalers or the supermarket?

The thing that is wrong with trying to tweek recipes using the numbers in soap calcs is that they are totally wrong for OO. So they never work for high OO soap. You might have to do test soaps, leave for 6 months and then compare them.

 

[Dean]

Your recipie will be drying. Babassu is similar to CO which u have plenty of.

Plus you got a lot going on in ur recipie. Perhaps simplify for now. You need a latherer, a hardener, oleic filler and maybe a lather stablizer. Once u get results from those 3-4 that u like then u can add additional oils.

Suggested...


If u want a more milder bar u can drop the CO by 5 and increase the CB by 5.

 

[dixiedragon]

I like this:
50% shea
5% castor
20% coconut
25% HO sunflower
2% superfat

I think this takes a longer cure time than a lard soap - more like 8-12 weeks than 6-8 weeks. Next time I try this I might split the 25% between sunflower and rice bran.

 

[shunt2011]

Also you have quite enough cleansing in the CO. I wouldn’t add babassu.

 

[Dawni]

Also you have quite enough cleansing in the CO. I wouldn’t add babassu.

My opinion comes from spending for a hobby and not selling right now, rather than experience..

Babasu tends to be more expensive than coconut in general, more so where I am. I try to experiment with what's cheap in case something goes wrong...

And from reading, babasu is better for your skin if it's in leave on products.

I got my 1kg local cocoa butter here for about $22 so that's way cheaper than yours lol and I have been using it in almost all my soaps for hardness, since I am unable to find palm nor lard and tallow.

I have experimented with brine soap that contained 60% coconut with 20% CB and 20% rice bran with 10% SF, but I can't tell you much since it's still curing... Other than test pieces don't feel drying (to me), and there is some chocolatey scent that survived.