While my last soap experiment, Spearmint Soap, is currently being tested and I await feedback, I decided to try something new. As I’ve mentioned before I love to try new things, but rather than make a full batch of something new and find out that it didn’t turn out to be a great soap, I decided to make a split batch. This is easy enough to do since many of my soaps have the same base recipe. The recipe includes Olive Oil, Coconut Oil, Water and Sodium Hydroxide (lye). After combining these ingredients in the proper order, and mixing them at the appropriate temperature until they are the right consistency, I poured half of the soap in a separate bowl.

To the first half I added fresh aloe juice/gel that I had removed from the inside of several aloe leaves. That is not the new soap. My aloe soap has actually become one of my more popular soaps and I thought I should make some more.  For the new soap I added grapefruit peel to the second half. I had dried and stored this peel a while back. When I opened the container the fragrance was strong and pleasant and unmistakably grapefruit. I ground the dried peel until it was a powder. Then mixed it into the soap before it was poured into the mold.

I am not certain what effects this will have on the finished product. Even though grapefruit peel is reported to have vitamins and enzymes that are beneficial for skin care I don’t know that they would survive the chemical process involved in making soap. Unfortunately, the fragrance will barely, if at all, survive the processing that is yet to take place. It will probably add some color, maybe yellow, and some texture to the bar.

The most difficult part about cold process soap making is waiting six weeks for the soap to be ready to use. I’ll let you know how it turns out.