INGREDIENTS

INSTRUCTIONS

Continued from Part 1  NOTES    In the U.S., Red Devil lye comes in
12-oz containers. In Europe it  generally comes in 350-g containers,
which is about 3 percent more.  You don't want to measure lye, you want
to use the whole container.  If your container is not this size, then
scale the recipe up or down  accordingly. Leftover lye is a serious
disposal problem.    Where to buy 9 pounds of fat? If you're using an
animal fat (beef or  pork), you can buy it from your butcher. What I
find I have to do is  reserve it, because they normally don't keep the
fat after they've  cut up their cow. Sometimes they will charge you for
the fat (I've  paid anywhere from 10 to 45 cents a pound); sometimes
they won't.  I've only ever made soap with beef fat; this makes a hard,
mild,  slow-lathering soap. The recipe will work equally well with
other  animal fats to produce a similar result.  Coconut oil yields a
softer, quick-lathering soap. Olive oil and other vegetable cooking
oils yield a very soft soap that never completely hardens.
Unfortunately, these oils are sensitive to air and light, and soap
made from cooking oils will spoil in a few weeks unless it is
refrigerated.    Volatile fragrance oils, also called essential oils,
are highly  concentrated scent ingredients.  You can usually buy them
at  health-food stores, and you can sometimes find exotic fragrances at
specialty food-and-spice shops.  The amount that you should use
depends on how fragrant you want the soap to be. A few drops of musk
oil is enough to scent an entire batch of soap; less-potent  fragrances
such as a fruit oil might require about a teaspoon or two  5-10 ml.
Soap scented with herbs is also popular; herbs like lemon  thyme or
verbena or lavender work well. To scent with herbs, make an  herbal oil
by packing a 1/2-cup (approximately) container with herbs  and then
filling it with a pleasant-smelling vegetable oil, such as  almond oil.
Let this mixture sit for a few weeks, stirring it every  day, then heat
in a double boiler for 10 minutes, then cool and  strain the oil.  
The soap works just fine with no fragrance at all, and many people
prefer it that way. I certainly do.    You may run into problems at the
stage "Add the fat and stir until  it's all melted." I almost always
do. What happens is that the  water/lye mixture runs out of heat before
all the fat melts. What you  have to do is add heat somehow.  The way I
do this is to grab the tub  (which now contains all the fat), go into
the kitchen, put it on top  of a burner, and turn the burner (and the
fan) on high. (Make sure  the windows are all open too.) When all the
fat is melted, I go back  outside and continue, adding the lemon juice.
The lemon juice lowers the pH.  The finished soap will have a pH of
about 9; you can lower this by adding more lemon juice.  : Difficulty:
challenging.  : Time:  Day 1:  30 minutes preparation; 1-2 hours
cooking.  : Day 2:  usually about 1 hour.  : Precision:  Be precise.
Also be careful.  : Aviva Garrett  : Santa Cruz, CA  : Excelan, Inc.,
San Jose  : ucbvax!mtxinu!excelan!aviva  : Copyright (C) 1986 USENET
Community Trust  From Gemini's MASSIVE MealMaster collection at
www.synapse.com/~gemini

A Message from our Provider:

“Have you kept your promise to God?”