Cream liquid hand soap

[LianaM]

Good Morning!

Have you ever made cream liquid hand soap? If so I was hoping maybe you could answer some questions for me and wondering if you have a recipe?

What’s the difference between using the solid and fractioned coconut oil? Which would be best to use?

If I use solid coconut oil do I melt it first or put it in as is? Also will it go solid in when it cools?

Thanks so much!
Liana

 

[LiminalVeil]

@IrishLass has a legendary cream soap recipe somewhere on this forum. But it may prove to be difficult to execute without a strong foundation in LS making. I will try to find the post and link it.
However, I have found that most of my soap pastes will turn into a cream soap if phase two of the process is followed.
About the coconut oils—I have never used fractioned—it’s very liquid at low temps and has a strong smell if I recall —but any combination of the right oils with balanced values will work. I would recommend using a soap calculator and adjusting your oil percentages until you see a projected result that looks good.
About melting the oils—I would definitely melt and combine all your oils before adding the KOH.
What are the other oils? At high percentages, coconut can be really drying to the skin, unless this soap is only intended for cleaning things.

 

[LiminalVeil]

@IrishLass has a legendary cream soap recipe somewhere on this forum. But it may prove to be difficult to execute without a strong foundation in LS making. I will try to find the post and link it.
However, I have found that most of my soap pastes will turn into a cream soap if phase two of the process is followed.
About the coconut oils—I have never used fractioned—it’s very liquid at low temps and has a strong smell if I recall —but any combination of the right oils with balanced values will work. I would recommend using a soap calculator and adjusting your oil percentages until you see a projected result that looks good.
About melting the oils—I would definitely melt and combine all your oils before adding the KOH.
What are the other oils? At high percentages, coconut can be really drying to the skin, unless this soap is only intended for cleaning things.

https://www.soapmakingforum.com/threads/my-creamy-cocoa-shea-gls-tutorial.57974/page-6

Here’s the thread. This recipe has a lot of moving parts!
Like I said, most paste recipes will turn to varying degrees of cream if all the post-paste steps are followed. Here is some I finished yesterday. It didn’t turn to cream until I superfatted and added fragrance oil—probably because of the very high oleic content.

 

[AliOop]

Fractionated coconut oil in soap is even more stripping to the skin than regular coconut oil. So no, I wouldn’t use it for liquid soap. It’s great in lotions, though.

You can achieve a more creamy-looking liquid soap by using fats that don’t produce a clear LS, such as lard, tallow, and some of the butters. I love all of them in liquid soap.

Irish Lass’ Creamy Cocoa-Shea recipe goes a step farther to get the pearly look, which is achieved by the addition of stearic acid, which also thickens the soap.

But I would not call this a cream soap. That term is used by soapers to refer to something more like the consistency of shaving cream. There is a huge cream soap thread on here if you want to read it. It’s quite the process.

As for a liquid soap that looks like the photo above (very pretty btw @LiminalVeil!), you could definitely call it “creamy,” as an adjective, to avoid this confusion.

 

[DeeAnna]

I agree with Ali -- you can make a creamy looking or pearly looking liquid soap, but that's not the same as a cream soap.

Cream soap and many shave soap recipes are similar to each other in that they use a high % of stearic acid in the recipe to achieve a distinctive type of lather and texture. These soap types use a lot more stearic acid than the few percent of stearic needed to get an opaque pearly look in liquid soap.

 

[LianaM]

What do you guys think of this recipe? Would the coconut oil go solid when it cools or is there not quite enough for that to happen? Thank you so much for all your help.

Ingredients:

1. 1/4 cup unrefined shea butter
2. 1/4 cup coconut oil
3. 1/2 cup liquid castile soap
4. 15 drop of peppermint/ lavender essential oil

 

[LiminalVeil]

What do you guys think of this recipe? Would the coconut oil go solid when it cools or is there not quite enough for that to happen? Thank you so much for all your help.

Ingredients:

1. 1/4 cup unrefined shea butter
2. 1/4 cup coconut oil
3. 1/2 cup liquid castile soap
4. 15 drop of peppermint/ lavender essential oil

I don’t think this will have the result you want. That would be a lot of unsaponified oil. It’s doubtful that it would sud. The coconut oil would definitely be solid unless the room was hot or it was fractioned coconut. It will be really oily and hard to rinse off. It would also separate.
It is well worth picking up a liquid soap making book like Jackie Thompson’s to learn the basic principles of how and why everything works.
Alternatively, you can try diluting some finished castille with distilled water, a lighter oil like jojoba or marula at 2-3% mixed with an emulsifier like polysorbate 80 and placing it in a foaming bottle.