How to make carrot cold process soap.


Soap making level – BASIC

Table of contents

Carrot Soap Recipe

Adding carrot to a soap using the cold process soap method is actually easier than you may believe. The benefits of doing this however make it worth learning.

Carrots are known for keeping you skin healthy but that is bases on eating the vegetable. What happens when you use it to clean your skin in soap. Well the beauty of the human skin is that it absorbs soluble nutrients quickly along with other chemicals but this makes using carrots on your skin in the form of a soap so beneficial.

Vitamin A and beta carotene is absorbed into the skin while displacing oil and dirt and keeping the collagen in your skin supple has to be a great benefit to learning this soap recipe.

Making carrot soap recipe only requires combining three base oils and a carrot puree with the traditional ingredients to cold process soap making.

Cold Process Soap Making Safety

The one key point that is stressed as we teach and we will stress here at Bahamas Candle and Soap is the importance of safety in candle and soap making.

When making soap you will be working with super heated materials with the potential to cause major skin burns. You must be sure that you are properly prepared.

The main ingredient in soap making is sodium hydroxide also known as lye. This corrosive chemical reacts with water and begins to heat up drastically, however this chemical reaction is needed to convert oils into soap.

It is good to make safety procedures a standard and a habit when it comes to making cold process soap. Many soap makers have stated that after making soap for a while it becomes easier and less scary once they stick to safety protocols

Sodium Hydroxide – Lye SAFETY

Sodium hydroxide is an inorganic compound used to emulsify the fats of oils into soap. When used properly in soap there will be no lye left over in the soap as its chemical makeup changes to create the actual soap.

When handling lye be sure to protect your exposed skin. Here are a few items we recommend you have.

  • Gloves
  • Long sleeve shirt
  • Long pants
  • Closed toe shoes
  • Safety Goggles

These items will ensure if there are any accidents such as splashes you will keep your skin safe from the burning sensation of lye.

NOTE

  • Use an appropriate container to hold your lye and to mix your lye water. Heat tempered glass works very well or hard plastic containers.
  • When making your lye water remember to add the LYE to the WATER and never the other way around.
  • Mix you lye solution in a well ventilated area. The fumes that will arise from mixing water and lye can become noxious to some persons while its chemical scent can burn your nose and make your eyes water.
  • Ensure that you are wearing your safety glasses, rubber gloves, long sleeve shirt and pants and close toe shoes. This is to avoid any splashes getting on your skin. Another reason is that if you use a container that cannot handle the heat created by the lye water solution it could break and the entire solution can get on your body.
  • Learn more about lye safety HERE

Oils

In some recipes and depending on where in the world you live you may have to pre heat your oils. Oils can also burn the skin when heated hence ensuring that you are safe from splashes or spills is very important.

This recipe uses Olive and Coconut and cocoa butter

Carrot cold process soap recipe Ingredients

IngredientPecentageWeight
Olive Oil64%21.12oz
Coconut Oil25%8.25oz
Cocoa Butter11%3.63oz
Distilled Water12.54(9.54 )oz
Lye4.63oz
Carrots3oz
Fragrance Oil (optional)1.5oz
Sodium Lactate (optional)2tsp
carrot soap recipe

Soap recipe calculation

Click to download the pdf file of the carrot soap recipe calculations. You can keep it on file as a part of your soap recipe collection.

Tools needed for carrot cold process soap making

2qt Glass Mixing Bowl or container

soap making tools

Spatula

heat tempered measuring cups

soap making tools

Stick Blender

Infrared Thermomete

Steel whisk

soap making tools

Measuring spoon 1oz

soap making tools

42oz loaf mold

handmade Soap making supplies soap loaf mold supplies

Food grade scale

soap making tools

Blender

handmade cold process soap

Instructions to make carrot cold process soap

Making this soap requires an additional ingredient other than the typical soap making process. That ingredient is the actual carrot. Adding carrot to soap requires some pre preparation.

If mince or grater the carrot and add it directly to the soap you can get a somewhat type of carrot soap but you will not gain any of the benefits of the actual carrot.

To add carrot to the soap follow these preparation steps

  1. Chop the carrots in slices. You can dice them if you prefer either is fine.
  2. Place the carrot in a pot to boil on the stove using 3oz of your 12.54oz of distilled water. You should have 3oz of water to your 3oz of carrot (measured by weight)
  3. Let your carrots simmer for 8-10 minutes with the pot top on to make them soft but not mushy.
  4. Set aside to cool while you prepare your lye water with the remaining 10.54oz of distilled water. (Carrot preparation will continue after the Lye water preparation in this article.)

1 – Lye water preparation for cold process soap making

Remember to observe the safety protocol for handling sodium hydroxide.

infared thermometer
  1. Using your heat tempered measuring cups measure out by weight using your scale the remaining 10.54oz of distilled water (its ok if you are do not have exactly 10.54 but you should have close to 10oz of water by weight.
  2. Use your second measuring cup to weigh out 4.14oz of sodium hydroxide/lye.
  3. Add your lye to water (never the other way around) slowly and mix using the steel whisk until dissolved. Check the temperature of the lye mixture once the lye has been dissolved. It can be up to 200 degrees fahrenheit.
  4. Set your lye water to the side to cool but safely away from any accidents such as bumping the table or knocking over the measuring cup. (NOTE – depending on your location and ambient heat, you can place your lye water in the refrigerator to cool quicker. You will want to check on it every 5 minutes taking its temperature using the infrared thermometer. 120-130 degrees fahrenheit is a good temperature that you are looking for.)
  5. To ensure an even harder bar and to make it easier to remove from the mold add the 2tsp of sodium Lactate to the lye water mix.

Now that you have prepared your lye water you can get back to finalizing your preparation of the carrots.

Instructions to make carrot cold process soap – cont

  1. At this point the boiled carrots should have cooled enough for you to place them in the blender with the remaining water. If your boiled it for 8-10 minutes with the top on you should still have about 2oz of water left.
  2. Puree the carrot in the blender. If you do not have enough water left over from boiling you can add more 1oz at a time. (note the more water you add the longer you will have to cure your soap in the end)
  3. Your carrot puree should not have any large chunks of carrot. It should be pulverized and look almost like a smoothie. Set this carrot puree off to the side with while you continue to prep your ingredients

2 – Oil preparation for carrot cold process soap recipe

Using multiple oils can become difficult to manage especially when it comes to combining all the oils together.

If you are unfamiliar with ways to combine multiple oils into one bowl properly you can visit How to combine multiple oils for soap making and familiarize yourself with the techniques involved.

Which ever technique you use make sure you add all of your oils together in the 2qt large mixing bowl. If you did not read the article on adding oil you may have missed the part about ensuring all your oils are melted and clear.

You will need your oils in a liquid state and at the right temperature roughly between 80-120 degrees fahrenheit, before continuing. Again if you are not sure how to do this skip over to the other article How to combine multiple oils for soap making.

With all you oils combined in the mixing bowl I find it a good practice to stir the oils together either with a spatula or more vigorously with a stick blender the more oils used. This is to ensure that the oils marry well within the mixture and are prepared for the lye water.

3 – Add Essential or Fragrance Oils (optional)

If you have an essential oil or fragrance oil that you would like to add to your recipe this is a good time to add it to the oil mixture.

There is one caveat to this however. Not all fragrance oils behave well in cold process soap making. You must ensure that you now how the fragrance oil will react to the soap.

Sometimes this means that it will accelerate trace, it will discolor or it some cases when adding the carrot puree it can cause the soap to begin to separate. Make sure you choose the right fragrance oil. We recommend using essential oils as they are more reliable

Measure out fragrance in a glass container. (do not use plastic container for essential oils) When measuring use wax paper on top of your scale to avoid the oil spilling on the plastic of the scale. Essential oil eats at plastic and will destroy your scale.

Make it a habit when using fragrance or essential oil to use a glass container. Add the fragrance to your oil mixture in the mixing bowl and stir. Now you are ready to add your lye water.

NOTE – if your fragrance accelerates trace then adding it to the oil is not the best option. Wait until you have reached a light trace to add your fragrance.

4-  Oil and Lye Mixture to make carrot soap

  1. Take note of the temperature of your oils and your lye water. At this point they both should be between 80-100 degrees fahrenheit but closer to 100-120.
  2. With your stick blender in your oils well burped, pour your lye water into your Oil mixture along stick blender to prevent bubbles.
  3. Begin to blend the lye water and oils together with short pulses from your stick blender and then longer sustained mixing. (Depending on your fragrance oil, trace may be accelerated if you added the fragrance to the base oils, be sure to work quickly and blend to light trace. If you did not add the fragrance to the base oil then continue.)
  4. Mix your batter until you have reached a light trace.
  5. Add your carrot puree to the batter and stir well with the spatula or whisk to incorporate it into the soap making process. (If you needed to add fragrance to your soap that will accelerate the batter make sure you add your carrot puree and stir well before adding the fragrance.)
  6. Continue to sick blend the soap batter to a medium thick trace. At this point the batter is still fluid enough to pour into your mold easily. Remove the stick blender and continue to mix with your spatula or whisk to keep the batter fluid.
  7. Pour mixture into the loaf mold, and ensure you scrape out any remaining batter into the mold. Tap the mold on your work bench to remove any bubbles from the poured batter. You can design the top as needed
  8. Depending on ambient temperature of your work room, cover with cardboard or wax paper over top then put to bed with towels to go through trace. (NOTE – If in a room at 75deg or more leave open and exposed as putting it to bed with a covering will most likely cause it to overheat and volcano. If in a cooler room cover the soap to let its own heat help take it to gel phase for brighter colors.)
handmade carrot cold process soap

5 -Removing your soap from the mold

  1. Let you soap sit for 24 hours before removing from the mold.
  2. Check its readiness to be handled and removed by pressing lightly on the top of the soap. It should be slightly hard to the touch if it is still soft leave it in the mold for another 24 hours.
  3. After 48 hours and the soap has not hardened enough, you can place in the refrigerator for an hour to cool to a point to make it easier to remove from the mold without damaging the soap.
  4. After cooling remove the silicon and soap fro the wooden mold by turning the mold upside down. The silicone part should slide out easily.
  5. Pull the sides of the silicone mold away from the soap slowly. If it looks sticky as you pull place the soap back into the refrigerator. If not continue to gently pull the sides away from the soap.
  6. Once all four sides are pulled away turn the silicone mold upside down and while pulling at the two narrow end of the silicone press down gently on the bottom of the silicone onto the soap.(this will help release the soap from the mold)
  7. As the soap begins to slide out of the mold help it along the way by pushing on the bottom of the mold until it slides completely out of the mold.

6 – Carrot soap cutting and curing process

Cutting your soap is completely up to you. You can cut as thick or as thin as you like. The most standard thickness is often at 1 inch. For a typical soap loaf this will yield 10 bars of soap.

  1. Cut your soap using a soap cutter, a knife dedicated to soap cutting or a wire chees/soap cutter.
  2. Cut them 1 in thick, or to any thickness you like (Just do not leave it as one full loaf for long, the longer you wait the harder it becomes to cut the soap because it will begin to cure and get harder)
  3. Let your soap bars sit in a cool dry place for 4-6 weeks to cure. (Curing removes the excess water from the soap, this causes the soap to last longer.)
  4. Rotate your soap, changing the part that it sits on around to allow even evaporation of water from your soap.
  5. If you want to track its rate of curing you can weigh the soap bar directly after cutting it and over the next few weeks weight it again. When the weight becomes negligible to track your curing process has completed.

Congratulations on making your Carrot cold process soap

Adding new ingredients to a soap recipe will open your soap making world to a myriad of options. Although we used carrot this time you can use any type of vegetable that can be boiled and pureed.

Practice this technique at least two more times to make sure you get the hang of it. If any questions please do not hesitate to send us a message via our contact page or leave a message below in the comments section.

We would love to hear your success stories or if you are having trouble we would love to help you our.

We also carry soap making kits that are great to get started with if this is your first time making cold process soap.

Bahamas Soap Maker

Rashad has been making soaps since the inception of Bahamas Candle and Soap in 2008. Since this time he has taught a number of students how make homemade soap using the melt and pour process or the cold process of soap making. His preference is cold process soap making because of the versatility you have in designing not only the ingredients but the aesthetics of the soap. Soap making became more than a hobby for Rashad and he loves trying new techniques and teaching others how they too can make their own soap at home.

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