Substitute for coconut oil

Soapmaking Forum

Help Support Soapmaking Forum:

This site may earn a commission from merchant affiliate links, including eBay, Amazon, and others.

Sunibee

Well-Known Member
Joined
Oct 9, 2020
Messages
172
Reaction score
113
Location
India
Hi, has anyone tried substituting coconut with palm.oil in a Bastille recipe .I used to make with coconut. My neice suddenly got allergic to Coconut oil..if so how good is the bar plz . Thank you in advance
 
I guess by “bastille” you mean a recipe that is mostly olive oil, with small additions of a few other oils? There is no agreed-upon definition of this type of soap, so you're technically free to replace anything with anything else and call it that way.

BUT you are aiming at some particular function: avoiding coconut oil. CO serves a particular purpose in soap, and it depends on a few things what it is best replaced with.
First, your niece. That's a bummer :(. Wrt soap, it would help a lot to know if she has a allergy specifically against Cocos nucifera, or rather an intolerance to soaps with lauric acid. In the former case (aka lauric soaps are okay, but CO is a no-go), the obvious replacement for CO is palm kernel oil/flakes (or, if you can get/want to afford it: babaçu or murumuru). Thing is, these are from palm tree seeds too, and someone with a CO allergy might or might not be sensitive to these as well.
The only other common soapmaking oil that offers lauric acid (= bubbles and cleansing factor), is laurel berry oil, that would make an Aleppo-type soap.

Palm oil (from the pulp of the oil-palm fruit) is an entirely different oil than coconut oil. Adding it to a mostly-olive soap won't help you at all with a more lively lather, nor will it boost the cleansing action of the soap. It does help with hardness and increase the life span of the bar, though. Of course you can add palm oil to olive soap, but don't expect it to cheer up its otherwise quite dull and hesitant castile character, quite as quickly as CO would do.

If you were adding coconut oil for the lather, don't forget the other tricks to increase bubbliness of soap! Some % of castor oil, add sugar/sorbitol to the lye, use aloe vera juice instead of water. And at usage time: use a soapcloth (bar soap) or a foamer bottle (liquid soap).
 
@ResolvableOwl.. thank you so much. My cousin just mentioned coconut oil. I will double chk with her. They are in the UK n she is a doctor as well. Her son is highly allergic to nuts. Thankfully he is okay with Almonds. So it's very restrictive. In the house. But thank you for the ideas.. I will definitely look up palm kernel oil/ flakes. Am assuming soy will not be an option then ? . Will look it up and let you know thank you so much for your help :)
 
Soy is not a nut nor a palm tree, so that shouldn't be a problem (however, it's a common allergen by itself, and you better ask your cousin/family beforehand).
But for making soap bars, soybean oil is not a superstar, it makes soft, mild soap that is, well, soft and mild, i. e. not hard and not impressive lather-wise. On top, you cannot use much of it before possibly running into rancidity issues (I wouldn't go beyond 20% without previous testing).
 
Are you looking to make a Bastille for it's high olive oil content?

I ask because technically, you can make soap without coconut oil or a substitute at all. It will still clean, it will still lather, though a bit differently than a soap with coconut oil in it.

A proper castille takes long to cure but some have had amazing results with Zany's no slime castille. If you play around with the numbers in a soap calculator I'm sure you could also come up with a balanced soap that won't need too long to cure, still be gentle, and has no coconut oil.
 
What about Babassu. I don’t get on with coconut, but babassu is ok. Its much less drying than coconut.
 
Back
Top