Avocado soap gentle peeling recipe

In this recipe I wanted to try to add a fruit to my soap.

Avocado contains 10-30% oils[1] and belongs together with olives to fruits with the highest content of fat [2,3].

That is why it is a perfect fruit to try in soap:

  • there is not too much water to possibly break the emulsion if added in trace.
  • because of oil content it can be mixed directly with oils
  • we introduce in our soap avocado oils
  • our soap will contain phytosterols


I also wanted to make this avocado soap gentle peeling, and at the same time very creamy and moisturizing.

That is why i used 25% cream, mixed with the whey I had from my home-made cheese instead of water! 

For the gentle peeling part I used the avocado seed – that’s right, in this recipe, almost everything is used!

This soap is also a nice example of the effect of gel phase on soap color and how it can negatively affect the soap aesthetics, when only a partial gel occurs (only a part of soap gels).

Recipe

 

% oils, oz, g, ingredient

40%, 14.1 oz, 400 g, corn oil

25%, 8.8 oz, 250 g, olive oil

25%, 8.8 oz, 250 g, coconut oil

10%, 3.5 oz, 100 g, palm oil

1 avocado pulp

 

6 oz, 172 g,  25% cream

7.3 oz, 208 g, whey (feel free to use distilled water instead!)

5.08oz, 144 g, NaOH

 

0.4 oz, 11 g, coconut FO (from gracefruit.com)

1 avocado seed (peeled off the brown skin & chopped into very small pieces)

Instructions

 

Avocado-soap-1.1) Freeze the whey and cream (e.g. in the ice cube tray) and make more ice cubes for cooling the lye

Cooling is important so that the milk sugars won’t caramelize and darken  – this would affect the color of your soap.

 

2) Pour the frozen whey/cream into a recipient and place it in the kitchen sink filled with cold water and ice cubes (beware to keep the level of water in the sink low enough to keep the cup stable, but high enough to cool efficiently)

 

3) Slowly add the NaOH to whey/cream frozen mix, while continuously stirring. 

The slower you add the NaOH, the slower the mixture will heat.  Stir well, because the wheat/cream with NaOH will turn into cream-like  consistency and you won’t see whether the NaOH granules dissolved or not.


4) Melt fats on a low heat and then add liquid oils – this will fasten the fats cooling.
5) Peel off one avocado and mix its pulp into the oils.  Keep the seed for step 6)
Avocado-soap-2

6) Peel the avocado seed of its brown skin and cut into four pieces. Then put in the blender and chop into small pieces. The avocado seed will turn red on the contact with air – do not panic it is not poisonous!

Avocado-soap-3


7) Pour the lye/whey/cream solution into oils with avocado and blend until light trace.
8) Add fragrances and continue mixing until a thick trace. This is needed so that the avocado seed do not sink to the bottom of the mold. 

9) Take approximately 1/3 of the soap and add chopped avocado seed. Stir well.

10) According to your preferences, pour the peeling and non-peeling part into mold. I obtained the pattern you can see on the very first picture – right – by first pouring the peeling part on the bottom of the mold and then pouring the non-peeling part of the soap. This second part pushed the peeling part to the sides. The soap on left is without the peeling part.

11) I used plastic molds, and after pouring I covered the soap with the baking paper - to prevent the soda ash.
Avocado-soap-gel-phase

 

12) Despite the fact that the mold was not insulated, the soap did pass the gel phase – except for the two I poured in the single-soap molds – these started to gel on the side where they touched the big mold - but not on the other side.

The soap had finally two different colors – the gelled and non-gelled – see the first picture, soap on the left and the picture below.

Avocado-soap-gel-phase2Avocado-soap-gel-phase3
I like the soap so much that I did a second batch of it recently. It is everyhting I wanted – gentle, mild peeling, moisturizing!
Did you like my recipe? How do you make your peeling soaps?
Which scents do you associate your avocado soap with?
Answer in a comment below!
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References