PKO and CO soap?

[adoptapitbull]

I went to a few outdoor markets this weekend and noticed a similarity between two of the handmade soaps from the vendors. Both soaps only used PKO and Coconut oil for their oils! They added some other things like powders and other additives, yet they only listed those two oils.

Has anyone ever made a PKO and CO only soap? What's it like?

 

[IrishLass]

I have! I made it with a high superfat (18%) so that it's not drying. It's very hard and super bubbly.


IrishLass

 

[Soapsugoii]

I've been wanting to try out some PKO in my recipe. Is it as drying as CO can be? I know they have similar properties.

Also, this might be a silly question, but what's the difference between Palm Oil and PKO?

 

[IrishLass]

I've been wanting to try out some PKO in my recipe. Is it as drying as CO can be? I know they have similar properties.

Also, this might be a silly question, but what's the difference between Palm Oil and PKO?

Don't be silly- that's a very good question.

Palm oil is extracted from the fruit or flesh of the palm itself, and PKO is extracted from the kernel or the pit of the palm fruit.

In soap, palm oil acts much like tallow or lard- it makes a hard, long lasting, white soap, and it is more creamy rather than bubbly in the lathering dept.

PKO acts like coconut oil or babassu oil- it makes a hard, white, cleansing bar, with lots of bubbly lather (although the bubbly factor is slightly less than coconut's). It's high in cleansing so a certain amount of discretion is still needed when formulating, but it's a bit less cleansing than coconut.

IrishLass

 

[Soapsugoii]

Thanks, Irishlass! I ordered some palm oil today. Can't wait to add it to my recipe, it might be just what I need to spice things up a bit and tone down my cleansing while keeping the hardness that I like.

Do you use it in your usual recipe? I see it so much in soap, and as one of the big three (CO, OO, PO) but never knew much about it.

Edit: Also, one more question, sorry! Is palm oil prone to overheating like coconut??

 

[adoptapitbull]

I never had any issues with overheating on any of my soaps despite the ingredients. Soap cool and you should be able to avoid it.

Stay away from anything with a high sugar content (honey especially) if you are worried about overheating.

If PKO is similar to CO, would a PKO and CO bar be so cleansing that it would be drying even with the high superfat?

Can you nix CO and just use PKO and still get a nice bar? I feel that I'm sensitive to CO, so I'm wondering if there is an alternative to it so I can use less or none at all.

 

[Soapsugoii]

I never had any issues with overheating on any of my soaps despite the ingredients. Soap cool and you should be able to avoid it.

I soooo wish that were true! I've been having a lot of overheating/cracking issues recently since I switched to CP from CPHP. I'm pretty sure it's the high coconut oil %. I soap cool, also, but still have problems.

Hoping the palm oil will let me tweak my recipe to avoid cracking but still get a hard bar with nice lather.

Also, from what I've read you can substitute PKO for CO and still get a soap with similar properties.

 

[adoptapitbull]

Are you talking about overheating in the mold, or in the oven? If you are doing HP (like, you cook the soap batter in a crockpot or stovetop), then I don't know how you have overheating in the mold. If you are doing CP then tossing it in the oven in the mold, then that makes sense. Lower the temp on your oven, or use silicone to prevent the overheating.

If you are using just a basic recipe, I don't know how you are getting so many overheating problems...You didn't add milk or honey or sugar to the recipe?

 

[Soapsugoii]

You're right, I need to get some silicon molds in the near future. Was looking at the ones at WSP just the other day. I've been using the baltic birch log molds from BB, which I love.

I get overheating even when I soap cool and leave it on my counter with the AC on. Even if the only additive is activated charcoal. It's quite frustrating; I made about five batches last week and I had to cut the tops off of every finished bar, almost.

I'm hoping a recipe tweak will nix the overheating problems, though. I don't use sugar or anything.

 

[Maythorn]

I recently saw soap in a store that was only coconut oil but wasn't a salt bar. It was the virgin kind of coconut oil and I thought how expensive it must be to make to sell on any larger scale. The bars were $7.50 each and about 6 oz. But true you aren't using any other oils so maybe it is a little economical in that way. I never bought one but I might. I love coconut oil but I like it best with palm kernel half and half of each in my recipe at between 25-26%.

 

[IrishLass]

Thanks, Irishlass! I ordered some palm oil today. Can't wait to add it to my recipe, it might be just what I need to spice things up a bit and tone down my cleansing while keeping the hardness that I like.

Do you use it in your usual recipe? I see it so much in soap, and as one of the big three (CO, OO, PO) but never knew much about it.

Edit: Also, one more question, sorry! Is palm oil prone to overheating like coconut??

You're welcome!

Although I've used palm (PO) in a few batches (the Spectrum brand from the grocery store), it's not an oil I regularly soap with. I like to use lard and tallow instead. The times I've used palm (PO), though, I never had overheating issues with it, but then again I never have overheating issues in any of my soaps unless a bunch of honey is added to the batch, or if I soap with 70% or more of coconut oil. By the way- I've found that placing bubble-wrap on the surface of high coconut oil soap batter right after you pour into the mold, and leaving it there until you unmold, will eliminate the cracking issue even if it overheats.

Although I don't normally use palm oil, I do use a lot of PKO. When I made an experimental batch of 100% PKO soap with a 20% s/f last year, it went through a fast gel like my 70% to 100% coconut soaps do and I was able to unmold and cut it after only 4 hours after pour, but it didn't get so hot as to cause cracking in my soap (and I didn't use bubble wrap for that batch either!). The soap came out quite nice. Although the bubbly factor is not on the same par as my coconut oil soaps, it still has lots of lovely, bubbly lather nevertheless. It's rock-hard, too. And with the high superfat, it's not drying at all to me.


IrishLass

 

[Soapsugoii]

Interesting! Thanks for the reply, IL I actually got my palm oil in the mail today, so I'm going to measure out my oils before I go to work in a bit, and do a batch when I get home tonight. I'm thinking 40% CO, 40% PO and 20% OO.

About the bubble wrap - do you tape it down to keep the soap from rising, or does it disperse the heat somehow? How does it keep the soap from cracking?

 

[IrishLass]

Interesting! Thanks for the reply, IL I actually got my palm oil in the mail today, so I'm going to measure out my oils before I go to work in a bit, and do a batch when I get home tonight. I'm thinking 40% CO, 40% PO and 20% OO.

About the bubble wrap - do you tape it down to keep the soap from rising, or does it disperse the heat somehow? How does it keep the soap from cracking?

Thanks for bringing that up. I forgot to mention that after I place the bubble-wrap on the surface of my soap (making sure to gently press down so that all the 'bubbles' on the wrap are pressing into the batter, but the flat top of the wrap is not), I then place my mold cover over the top of the mold and place a couple of jugs of water on top of the mold cover to act as a counter-weight to the hot expanding soap when it goes through gel. I'm not exactly sure how it prevents cracking, but it does. I came upon this trick by happy accident when I made a 100% CO batch of my milk & honey soap in which I used bubble-wrap as my liner in order to get that cool honeycomb look. It was my only batch of 100% CO that didn't form a crack. I tried the bubble-wrap trick with subsequent 100% CO batches, and no cracks in those either, no matter how hot the gel.

IrishLass

 

[adoptapitbull]

Interesting! Thanks for the reply, IL I actually got my palm oil in the mail today, so I'm going to measure out my oils before I go to work in a bit, and do a batch when I get home tonight. I'm thinking 40% CO, 40% PO and 20% OO.

About the bubble wrap - do you tape it down to keep the soap from rising, or does it disperse the heat somehow? How does it keep the soap from cracking?

You may find that your bar is super drying with that high of CO. Try reversing the CO with the OO and you'll get a much less drying bar.

 

[IrishLass]

[You may find that your bar is super drying with that high of CO. Try reversing the CO with the OO and you'll get a much less drying bar.

If she superfats it high enough, it should be fine. I use way more coconut than 40%, but with a good superfat it's not drying to me in the least.


IrishLass

 

[Soapsugoii]

Thanks, pitbull. I'll try that sometime for sure I like my high CO bars tho, and always superfat high (around 20%) so it should be ok.

Hmm, i'll definitely give the bubble wrap thing a try, IL! Going to make a batch with PO in about an hour tho so I should be able to tell you if tweaking the recipe helps or not.

Either way, I have some silicone molds on the way from bebe so that should help the overheating issue regardless.